Concluding Observations on the Rev. William Jay as a Preacher and as an Author, by the Editors

Hitherto in this volume the reader’s attention has been mainly directed to Mr. Jay’s own account of himself — his history, his progress, his recollections. The Editors have felt that their services to his memory ought to be chiefly regulated by the documents placed in their hands, and limited to such passing annotations, or supplemental matter, as seemed to be required for conveying a just view of their subject, and a complete narrative of his history.

But judging that so interesting and remarkable a character well deserves a separate sketch from another hand beside his own, and supposing that the reader will expect something of this sort, as a conclusion to the volume, which in the main may be said to be his own representation of himself; the Editors have ventured to subjoin the following observations, on the two principal views of his public character for which he was admired by his contemporaries, and will be respected by future ages.

MR. JAY AS THE PREACHER.

A PREACHER who, from his first appearance in the Pulpit, at the age of Sixteen, till he retired from it when Eighty-four years old, fixed and held the attention of the Public; who during this lengthened period was heard with equal interest by the aged and the young, the learned and the illiterate, who always crowded, whenever he presented himself, to listen to his teaching; who was eulogized by such men as Wilberforce, Beckford, and Sir William Knighton; by Hall, Chalmers, and Foster; who, whether he preached in the city or in the village, drew after him his ministerial brethren, both of his own church and most others; who was esteemed and admired by all denominations of professing Christians; and who, when his sermons were sent forth from the press, raised for himself in both hemispheres, a reputation such as few of his own day, or any other, ever obtained, — must have possessed elements of power, after which it is worth while to inquire, not only for the purpose of gratifying curiosity, but to prompt and guide the spirit of lawful emulation. Such a preacher was Mr. Jay: and it is the object of this Sketch to show, in what his attractions principally consisted, and to what he owed his extensive and permanent popularity.

It may be stated, as a preliminary remark, that the arrangements of Providence, as regards his personal appearance, his endowments both of body and mind, the circumstances of his conversion, the peculiar nature of his professional education, as well as the state of the Christian Church when he first appeared in public, were all preparatory to his future eminence as a preacher of the Gospel. This, with a kind of instinctive sagacity, he perceived; and, from the commencement of his Christian career, fixed his eye exclusively upon the Pulpit, and cherished a hallowed desire to excel as a Minister of Jesus Christ. He clearly saw that, if he would do one great thing well, he must concentrate his powers upon that, and make everything else give place, or become subservient to it. He had from the beginning an almost intuitive perception of what constituted pulpit excellence; he studied the attractions and defects of other preachers — felt the promptings of a holy ambition after eminence and usefulness; and with that consciousness of power which usually attends genius, and inspires it with the foresight of success, he determined, by God’s grace to attain to distinction as a preacher. This, however, was not the mere yearning of youthful vanity, but the prompting of a heart throbbing with a solicitude for the salvation of souls. True it is, that his attention was first of all directed to this object by Mr. Winter. This excellent man discerned at once, what a bud of ministerial promise there was in that mason-lad whom he saw among his hearers, and who afterwards came in his apron to converse with him on the subject of religion and of the ministry. But the boy Jay embraced with his whole heart the sublime object, as soon as it was presented to him, and consecrated himself to it from the moment that it rose in its full-orbed glory upon his mental horizon.

His academic curriculum was of too short duration, and too limited in its literary advantages, and too often interrupted by preaching, to allow much hope of his ever being a scholar, a metaphysician, or a philosopher. But preaching of a very high order he was assured could be attained without these things. And he was right. — As a general principle learning is of essential importance to the ministers of religion; and, other things being equal, he will make the best preacher who is most thoroughly educated. Nor should our young ministers suffer themselves too hastily to conclude, that they can never attain to eminence in literature; and be induced to abandon it under the notion, that, as they have neither taste nor aptitude for it, they will concentrate all their attention upon preaching. Still, we contend it is not indispensable that every preacher should be an eminent scholar. Where, as in the case of Mr. Jay, opportunities for literature are denied to the eager aspirant after ministerial labour, and yet there are all the other essential elements of a good preacher, there let a strong determination be formed by all possible diligence in the use of such means as are afforded, to excel in that holy career, to which the leadings of Providence invite, and the impulses of a longing heart prompt.

Mr. Jay’s whole character as a public man may be summed up in that one word, the preacher; and it is in this view he must be contemplated by all who would conceive of him aright. True, he was an Author, and one of the most popular writers of his day, both in America and this country, yet nearly all his works consisted of Sermons, or what, as in his” Morning and Evening Exercises,^’ bore a resemblance to them. So that he was still a silent preacher, even in his books. Such a mind as his could, however, doubtless, by dint of resolute determination and close application, have attained to eminence in any department of study. He himself tells us that his taste at one time led him to abstruse speculation; but that, finding it engrossed too much of his time, and interfered with more useful pursuits, he laid it aside, and addicted himself to matters which bore more directly upon his ministerial duties. We have no doubt, however, that while conscience had something to do with this, mental aptitude was not wholly unconcerned. What was practical was far more congenial with his order of mind than what was speculative; and his choice of the former was as certainly and, perhaps, as much the result of temperament as of principle.

Mr. Jay as a preacher owed not a little to his personal appearance, and undoubtedly much to his voice. In the earlier periods of his history, his countenance was eminently prepossessing. The Portrait affixed to this volume, copied from a painting taken when he was about forty-nine years of age, and which was considered a good likeness at the time, proves this. His black hair, dark eyes, florid complexion, and an expression of features in which intelligence and benevolence, mingled with somewhat of archness, at once attracted and interested his hearers. As he advanced in years, he became much stouter, which, as he was never tall, destroyed in some measure the symmetry of his frame. A graphic writer thus describes his appearance in the decline of life: — “It is not very long since,” says Dr. James Hamilton, “we heard him with wonder and delight, and in our own as well as in millions of memories is still depicted that countenance whose sunshine furnished its own photograph; so wise and so witty, so wrinkled yet so radiant; with so much of youthful ardour welling up in the fountains of those deeply fringed, softly burning eyes; and with words so holy and so tender dropping from those lips in whose corners lurked all that was quaint or caustic; whilst like an oak-thicket on an old rampart-summit, that strong visage and firm brow rose and were lost in the shaggy wilderness which covered all with its copsy crown,”

Mr. Jay’s voice was certainly one of the charms of his preaching. It was sonorous but not loud — alternating between bass and tenor; strong yet soft; musical and flexible; and more adapted to give expression to what is tender, pathetic, and solemn, than to what is lively, impetuous, and impulsive. If it did not stir you as with the blast of a trumpet, it soothed and delighted you, as with the soft tones of a flute. This indeed was the general character of his preaching, in which the manner was suited to the matter. You sat in sweet stillness, luxuriating under those beautiful trains of quiet thinking, and gentle, holy, and evangelic emotion, uttered in tones so mellifluous, that you seemed to be listening to music which came from another world, and which lifted your soul to the sphere from which it emanated. An involuntary, unbidden tear occasionally suffused your eye, and a gentle emotion filled your heart, as some touching passage, in plaintive sounds, swelling like those of an Eolian harp, passed over your spirit and moved it, just as a summer’s breeze ruffles the surface of a lake, without deeply or violently disturbing it.

He entered the pulpit in a grave, collected manner, apparently absorbed in his mission, and with a step rather quick, yet solemn, and without hurry; and after sometimes casting a glance round upon the audience, retired into himself, and seemed to be gathering up his thoughts and energies to negotiate between God and man the weighty affairs of judgment and of mercy.

In the preliminary exercises of public worship, reading the Scriptures and prayer, Mr. Jay never forgot that, in one of these, he was emmciating the words of the Most High; and in the other, that he was addressing himself to Him before whom the seraphim veil their faces. It has been sometimes thought and said that very little spiritual, or at any rate saving effect, is produced by the public reading of the Scriptures. Is not this to be traced up to the careless, unimpressive, irreverend, and unfeeling manner in which the exercise is performed. The tones, emphasis, and accents of a good reader, who is neither elaborate, artificial, nor theatrical in his manner, convey both instruction and impression, and are a kind of exposition of the sacred text.

In prayer Mr. Jay was often singularly felicitous in his expressions, and always devout in his manner; his devotions were richly scriptural and strictly appropriate; perhaps occasionally a little too quaint in expression, and, therefore, liable to interfere with perfect composure and gravity. He was slow and solemn in his utterance, and his feelings were so far under control as never to hurry him into that rapidity and vociferation, which we regret to say, characterize those addresses to the Almighty which are made from some Nonconforming pulpits. If reform be necessary in the liturgical services of the Church of England, it is equally necessary in the extempore ones of some among the Dissenters. Occasionally there is too much of preaching in prayer; too much of theology; too little of petition and confession. There is a happy medium between that elaboration which, by its artificialness, represses religious feeling, and that negligence which disgusts good taste: between that muttering and trembling which betoken slavish dread, and the loud or even boisterous manner which indicates want of feeling and displays unhallowed familiarity. We do not wonder that Clmrch-people of refinement who occasionally attend Dissenting worship, complain of a want of solemnity and devout feeling in some of our public prayers; yet were extempore prayer performed as it should be, they would retire with a conviction of its superior appropriateness, earnestness, and adaptation to the various classes of the congregation, and the changeful experience of the Christian heart.

In the selection of his texts, Mr. Jay was often very ingenious. His extraordinary acquaintance with his Bible gave him great advantage in this. His hearers were often surprised by a passage which was so novel to them, that they did not know there was such a verse in the Scriptures. His canon was, that to secure and hold attention, to produce impression and do good, the preaching must be something that will “strike and stick.” Perhaps, in carrying out this, he sometimes erred on the side of quaintness, both in the selection of texts and in his illustrations. Yet a quaint text, if one may thus characterize any portion of Gods word, if it contain an important lesson, and if it be fairly dealt with, and be not by an ingenious fancy tortured upon the rack, to extort from it a meaning which it would not otherwise acknowledge, tends to secure attention and enliven the preaching. But this must not be done too often, or it will lose its effect, and subject the preacher to the imputation of being a pulpit-jester.

Mr. Jay’s introductions to his sermons were sometimes as striking as his texts. We remember once hearing him, when preaching on Pilate’s question put to Jesus Christ, — “What is truth?’’ — commence his sermon thus:” It is A truth, Pilate, that thou art a cowardly, guilty wretch, in surrendering Christ to be crucified, when thou wert convinced he was an innocent man.’’ This ex abrupto method of introduction is, however, a hazardous one, since it is somewhat diflBcult to keep up the attention to that altitude which it has reached by such an exordium. It is

N N like spicing the first dish at a feast so highly as to render all that follow in some measure insipid.

The prevailing character of Mr. Jays sermons, considered as to their matter, was the mixture of evangelical doctrine, experimental feeling, and Christian practice. His memoirs mention the fact, that on his first visit to London he had the character of several ministers described to him: one as a doctrinal, a second as a practical, and a third as an experimental preacher. With the good sense, tact, and discrimination belonging to him, he said to himself,” I will be neither exclusively, but all unitedly.^ So he was. His evangelism, so far as doctrine was concerned, was never very prominent, as a thing separate and by itself, in the form of a dogmatic statement, with proofs from Scripture and controversial arguments, but was held in solution in his general course of preaching. To borrow an illustration from his reminiscence of Mr. Newton, that good man, in speaking of his own Calvinism, said it was in his preaching, as sugar in a cup of tea, that which sweetened the whole, but which is not to be taken in the lump.

By some persons Mr. Jay has been thought a little deficient in not giving greater prominence to the chief truths of salvation in their dogmatic form. He acknowledged he was so in early life; but it may be satisfactorily explained without impeaching his Evangelism. When setting out in his ministry, he saw the errors into which many of the newly-formed evangelical school in the Church of England ran, in dwelling too abstractedly and exclusively upon dogmatic theology, and the bad efiect it had in some instances upon their conduct; — and in avoiding this extreme he, partially and for a time, inclined to another. He was in sentiment, however, decidedly evangelical, and also in his preaching, but not formally and controversially doctrinal. It was his evangelism which constituted no small share of the attraction of his preaching. His confession of faith, if such it may be called, delivered at his ordination, though drawn up -when only twenty-one years of age, is one of the most complete and beautiful compends of evangelical truth in the English language. He was, to a very great extent, an experimental preacher, and though his preaching seemed to touch chiefly upon the experience of those who were tried by the ordinary cares and sorrows of human life, and to suggest the usual topics of consolation adapted to such cases, yet it did not fail sometimes to analyze the deeper worldngs of the human heart when struggling with all the powers of darkness, and all the strength of its own corruptions. It was, however, the widow mourning over her bereavement, the mother weeping for her dead child, the man of broken fortunes, the orphan youth, the perplexed pilgrim, or the soul under the common temptations of our probation, that his preaching was mainly calculated to help and comfort; and hence the wide range of his popularity. But the intellectual doubts and difficulties, the profounder depths of mental distress, the sterner conflicts of the soul with unbelief, were perhaps, advisedly, not so much nor so frequently made the subjects of his discourses. Hence, amidst the crowd of his hearers and admirers, were not so many of those who wanted the stronger consolation which a heart bruised and broken in the spiritual conflict requires. But equally true is it, that he never administered to inconsistent professors the ardent spirit of Antinomian comfort, which was but too common at the commencement of his ministry; or to imaginative believers, the cordials of a sentimental comfort, no less common at the close of it. It was, however, as a practical preacher that Mr. Jay chiefly excelled; and here his excellences were transcendant. No man perceived more clearly the obligations of the Christian life, and no man urged them more earnestly or more attractively. It was his happy art to make men feel that wisdoms ways are ways of pleasantness and that all her paths are peace.

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Perhaps there is scarcely a single word which will more aptly describe Mr. Jay as a preacher than the term naturalness. This constituted, we are sure, no small part of the attraction of his manner. His voice, his tones, his action, were all inartificial, and displayed the gracefulness of nature. It was not an imitation of nature on the stage, but nature’s self in her own walk and place of action. He spoke to you as you felt he should do, without any uncouth awkwardnesses or caricature which disfigures nature, or any studied afiectation which destroys it. To much action in the pulpit, in the use of the hands and arms, he was strongly opposed, and seldom used any, except an occasional elevation of the hand. Here we think. he was somewhat deficient, for nature prompts in strong emotion to bodily action. But this was the least part and the lowest manifestation of his naturalness. He spoke /rom his own nature to the nature of others. He was himself a most inartificial man. All his tastes, his habits, and his pursuits proved this. He knew human nature well. He studied it in himself and in others. He knew man, how he thinks, and feels, and acts. He drew his knowledge, not from copies in books, but from the living original. Men felt when they heard him, that they were listening to a preacher who knew not only books, and theories, and systems, but humanity, both in its fallen and in its restored state; in its wants, woes, diseases, remedies, and varieties; one who could sympathize with them as well as teach them. When, on a Sunday-morning they came, worn and weary with the trials, toils, and cares of the six days’ labour, and placed themselves under the sound of his mellifluous voice, they felt sure of not being tantalized and disappointed with a cold intellectualism, or a mere logical demonstration, or a metaphysical abstraction, or a wordy nothing, which would have been giving them a stone when they asked for bread; or with something religiously poetic, which would have been ofiering them flowers when they wanted meat; — but he fed them with food convenient for them, and satisfied the cravings of their nature with what satisfied his own.

This quality of his preaching was very strikingly displayed in the illustrations with which his sermons abounded. He never suffered the attention of his hearers to doze over dry abstract disquisitions, or dull, didactic, and prosaic harangues, but kept it perpetually awake by appeals to their imagination. His talent for illustrative allusion was extraordinary. His sermons were not only by his beautiftd fancy illuminated, like the ancient missals, but illustrated, like modern books, by descriptive scenes. They contained all the glowing colouring of the one, with the more correct and graceful forms of the other. Here his naturalness constantly appeared, and in close resemblance to that of our Lord, who drew his similes and metaphors from the works of nature and the relationships of humanity. The great Teacher’s discourses were replete with images borrowed from the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; from rural sights and rural sounds; from the ties of parentage, and the reciprocal obligations of husband and wife, master and servant. So were Mr. Jay’s. A natural simplicity and beauty, polished yet artless, pervaded his discourses. There was comparatively little of the grandeur and sublimity of the great masters of eloquence, but a constant succession of chaste, tender, and smiling allusions. His preaching did not produce the effect of the lofty and fervid utterances of Robert Hall, which, with their elegant diction, mighty conceptions, and glowing imagery, raised you into a fellowship of rapture with the speaker’s own mind: nor did it bear any resemblance to the gorgeous language, exuberant fancy, and dazzling splendours of Chalmers, which overwhelmed you with such mental opulence. The eloquence of the two latter fell upon you as music from a fall and perfect orchestra. It came with the rush of a mountain torrent, and sounded majestic and awful like thunder booming over the ocean: but the eloquence of Mr. Jay was as the gentle flow of a beautiful river through a verdant landscape, or like the solemn, and soothing tones of the organ. In hearing him you were brought near by a sweet and resistless attraction. You felt you could approach him, and be at home with him, and were in a state of afl&nity with him; while a feeling of awe came over you as you listened to the others, which at once fascinated you, and transported you with delight, and yet made you almost tremble. It seemed, in listening to Hall and Chalmers, as if you could no more always bear such mental excitement than you could always endure the roar of a thunder-storm, or of the falls of Niagara: but to Mr. Jay you could for ever listen, just as you never feel burdened by the waves of ocean gently breaking upon the shore on a summers day, nor by the gurgling noise of a brook meandering among stones. Innumerable instances of this naturalness of allusion and illustration might be selected from his printed sermons, which, when uttered with all the effect given to them by the music of his pathetic tones, must have melted down the hearts of his hearers into a state of highly pleasurable emotion.

Mr. Jay was a master of the true pathetic. Ministers have too much neglected this. Some have thought to do all in religious teaching by forceful appeals of logic addressed to the intellect. The understanding is the only faculty they seek to engage. Their logic is clear, but it is cold. They deal with man in only one view of his nature, as a rational being, who has only to apprehend ideas, but forget that he is also an emotional being, who has a heart to feel, and who often needs rather to be moved than convinced. His sensibility, sometimes the best, the only, avenue to his soul, is left unobserved, unoccupied. If the true order of nature be for the head to guide the heart, yet, in our disturbed and disordered condition, it often happens that the heart is the avenue to the intellect. Men love to feel, as well as to think; and hence we speak of the luxury of tender emotion.

Mr. Jay knew this, and entered very deeply into Christian aesthetics. His voice gave him great advantages here. His very intonations touched and opened the springs of feeling. Whn the people were in a prepared state of mind, he has sometimes melted them by his manner of repeating an interjection, or a single word. His pathos, however, was not all confined to his manner, but extended itself to his matter. In this there were often the most tender and touching allusions and descriptions. Who, that ever read, can forget that beautiful passage in his sermon to husbands and wives, in which he represents woman, pleading on the ground of her weakness and dependence, for sympathy, kindness, and protection? To have heard this passage uttered by his pathetic tones and enforced by his plaintive looks, must have been followed by an effect more than dramatic: —

“Milton has finely expressed the difference in the original pair: —

* For contemplation he and valour form’d;
Por softness she and sweet attractive grace.’

Her bodily strength is inferior, her constitution less firm and vigorous, her frame more tender, her temper more yielding, her circumstances more generally depressing. A rose, a lily, allows of no rough usage. Tenderness demands gentleness; delicacy, care; pliancy, prOps. Has a condition fewer resources, and is there much in it of the afflictive and humbling? — the more does it need succour, and the more necessary is every assistance to maintain and increase the consequence of it, especially where so much depends upon the respectability of the character who fills it. — Where is the man who is not alive to this consideration? — Where is the husband, who, reflecting on her peculiar circumstances, would not be disposed by every possible means, to promote the dignity and the satisfaction of a wife? — What is the language of these circumstances? — ‘Honour

US; deal kindly with us. From many of the opportunities and means by which you procure favourable notice, we are excluded. Doomed to the shades, few of the high places of the earth are open to us. Alternately we are adored and oppressed. From our slaves, you become our tyrants. You feel our beauty, and avail yourselves of our weakness. You complain of our inferiority, but none of your behaviour bids us rise. Sensibility has given us a thousand feelings, which nature has kindly denied you. Always under restraints, we have little liberty of choice. Providence seems to have been more attentive to enable us to confer happiness, than to enjoy it. Every conditon has for us fresh mortifications; every relation new sorrows. We enter social bonds; it is a system of perpetual sacrifice. We cannot give life to others, without hazarding our own. We have sufierings which you do not share — cannot share. If spared, years and decays invade our charms, and much of the ardour produced by attraction departs with it. We may die. The grave covers us, and we are soon forgotten: soon are the days of your mourning ended, soon is our loss repaired: dismissed even from your speech, our name is to be heard no more, — a successor may dishke it. — Our children, after having a mother by nature, may fall under the control of a mother by affinity, and be mortified by distinctions made between them and her own ofispring. Though the duties which we have discharged invariably, be the most important and necessary, they do not shine: they are too common to strike: they procure no celebrity: the wife, the mother, fills no historic page. Our privations, our confinements, our wearisome days, our interrupted, our sleepless nights, the hours we have hung in anxious watchings over your sick and dying offspring — ’

There was an individualizing effect produced by Mr. Jay’s preaching. He not only preached before his congregation, but to them; and not only to the multitude, but to the individuals who composed it. His sermons formed a kind of mirror, which reflected the image of those who approached it, and in which every one saw himself as distinguished from others. Each of his hearers felt as if the preacher’s eye were fixed on him, and his discourse addressed to him. This is a happy art in preaching, and, indeed, in all public speaking, and in order to which it is necessary to approach, without descending below ourselves or our subject, or even the more intelligent of our auditors, yet as nearly as we can, to the easy comprehension of the mass of our hearers. When the preacher soars into the clouds where their understanding cannot track him, or diverges into a wood where they cannot find him, they Ysdll soon give over all attempts to follow him, and leave him to his wanderings. Mr. Jay’s simplicity, clearness, and intelligibility to all, were most commendable, rarely equalled, and never surpassed. It were desirable that these qualities should be remarked, and, as far as possible, imitated, by all preachers of the Gospel. His beautiful conceptions, expressed in good, plain, Saxon words, were easily understood by the bulk of his hearers; in fact, none could misunderstand them, while the most cultivated and refined could not feel displeased with them.

It is recorded of Arago, the celebrated French astronomer, that he had a peculiar facility of bringing down the high parts of astronomy to the comprehension of ordinary minds, — a faculty so rare, that some of the most distinguished astronomers have failed in making their science intelligible or interesting to a public auditory. Arago adopted a method which we believe had. never been tried before by any of his predecessors. When he began to give his course of lectures on astronomy, he glanced round on his audience to look for some dull aspirant for knowledge with a low forehead, and other indications that he was among the least intelligent of his hearers. He kept his eye fixed upon him; he addressed only him; and by the efiect of his eloquence and powers of explanation, as exhibited in the countenance of his pupil, he judged of their influence upon the rest of his audience. When he remained unconvinced, the orator tried new illustrations, till light beamed from the grateful countenance. Next morning, when Arago was breakfasting with his family, a visitor was announced. A gentleman entered — his pupil of the preceding evening, who, after expressing his admiration of the lecture, thanked Arago for the very peculiar attention he had paid him during the delivery. ^’ You had the appearance,’^ said he, “of giving the lecture only to me.’’ — Shall it be the ambition only of the astronomer, and not also of the preacher, to be understood by the convert, and to make every individual feel he is the party addressed? Shall they who preach salvation think only of pleasing the cultivated few, to the neglect of the ignorant multitude? Let the minister of religion take a lesson, ay, and reproof too, from the lecturer on astronomy. Mr. Jay had learnt this lesson, and practised it well. It is not meant, of course, that the preacher is always to dwell on elementary truths, and ever to accommodate his discourse to the poor and illiterate; but he ought never to forget that our Lord said,” the poor have the gospel preached unto thm; “and that it was observed of his own preaching, “the common people heard him gladly.” True we ought not to be always in the nursery feeding babes with milk; but then the babes ought not to be forgotten or neglected.

The character of strong sound sense which pervaded Mr. Jay’s sermons contributed very largely to his popularity, combined, as this uniformly was, with the practical. There seems to be in the public mind an intuitive perception that religion is not mere science or theory, but that it contains much that has to do with men’s business and bosoms. There is an innate conviction that it is not only something to know, but something to do. They may not be always very willing to do what is enjoiQed upon them, but still they expect to hear it, and are dissatisfied if they do not. They are aware that it is a matter which has to do with all persons, states, and circumstances. Hence they feel somewhat of surprise, and even disgust, with the preacher who deals much in abstractions that lie remote from human nature and life. They expect to be told not only how they should think, but how they should act: and one good sound maxim of spiritual wisdom, which will guide them through the intricacies of life, and the perplexities of casuistry will be far more valued than many an airy speculation, or elaborate investigation, of some profound and abstract question in theology. Mr. Jays practical directions possessed much of the terseness, the wisdom, and the force of proverbs. In a single sentence, he often expressed what others would expand into a paragraph or a page. Few ever had, in such perfection, the happy art of saying much in few words. They who could not carry away a whole sermon could remember a single sentence, which perhaps contained the pith of the whole. They may not have been able to secure the entire string of pearls; but they could retain one which was complete in itself, and a specimen of all the rest. He always preached as if he wished his sermon to be remembered as well as heard; and it was this which led him to condemn the essayform of sermonizing, and to adopt so uniformly the methodical arrangement of his discourses into the usual divisions and subdivisions of a sermon. He aimed not merely at present effect, but at permanent advantage; and his arrangement of his subject, which sometimes was fanciful, — aiming at antithesis and parallelism and approaching almost to the metrical, — was intended to assist the memory, and thus to promote usefulness. Mr. Hall, a master and high authority on such subjects, speaks of the narrow trammels to which in these latter days discourses from the pulpit are confined, “so different from the free and unfettered airs in which the first preachers of the gospel appeared before their audience. The sublime emotions with which they were fraught/^ he says, “would have rendered them impatient of such restrictions; nor could they suffer the impetuous stream of their argument, expostulation, and pathos, to be weakened by being diverted into the artificial reservoirs prepared in the heads and particulars of a modern sermon.” The analogy, however, of the two cases will not hold. There are occasions, no doubt, when the sermon may with propriety and effect assume the form and character of an oration, though rarely of an essay, especially when concentrated impression, rather than instruction, is the design of the preacher; but as a general rule, considering the heterogeneous nature of our congregations, the plan of heads and particulars, if they are not too numerous, is most for edification; and it was certainly the method which Mr. Hall himself adopted: his Sermon on Infidelity, and on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, being the only ones which are printed, in which the usual announcement of heads and particulars is omitted. Mr. Jays divisions, though always announced, were never unnecessarily multiplied; and thus, while he aided the memory, he did not burthen it.

Mr. Jay, though generally grave, chaste, and dignified in his composition, occasionally somewhat violated the law of propriety in regard to these excellences, by a quaintness of expression not perfectly reconcilable with good taste. This applies almost exclusively to his preaching, and was most probably purely extemporaneous. He has extruded nearly all of it from his printed discourses. This tendency to quaintness grew upon him in his declining years, when, perhaps under some consciousness of decaying force, he thought he would supply the deficiency by what was fanciful and odd, or quaint. He was, perhaps, somewhat sensible of this when, in his preface to his “Short Discourses” he wrote the following sentence: “Though he does not wish to indulge a bad taste, the Author would ever remember that the preacher ought to have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way. That which is too smooth easily slides off from the memory, and that which is lost in the act of hearing will do little good. It is desirable to get something that will strike and abide; something that recurring again and again, will employ the thoughts and the tongue; and if this cannot be accomplished in certain instances by modes of address which perhaps are not classically justifiable, should not a minister prefer utility to fame? ^’ — Certainly, to be useful is the great end of preaching; but even when that end requires” great plainness of speech,^^ everything that offends the strict laws of propriety may be avoided.

This, great preacher threw a sacred charm over his sermons by a profusion of Scripture phraseology, and allusion to Scripture facts. They were adorned with the beauty and redolent with the fragrance of flowers culled from the garden of inspiration. Indeed the beauty and the perfume were almost in excess. The passages were not so much selected for proof as for illustration: they were brought forward, as classic quotations are by public orators, to grace a speech, and to convey the speakers idea in the apposite language of a high authority. While listening to his discourses, and regaling themselves with his pleasing thoughts, his hearers were often surprised by his repetition of Scripture, so appropriate that it seemed as if it had been written for the occasion. He rarely ever referred to the book, chapter, and verse which he thus used, as he imagined that the hearers would be diverted from the subject, and disturb their neighbours by turning over the leaves of their Bibles, and by the rustling noise, if many did so, which this would occasion. Here we think he was a little in error in point of excess. Fewer passages, some of them explicitly quoted as well as repeated, with a passing remark which would bring out and impress their whole meaning, must do more good than so many

passages interwoven without reference or remark into the texture of the sermon.

Another excess in which he indulged in his later years, and in his ordinary ministrations, was, in the way of poetic quotation, especially verses of hymns. He was fond of poetry. His was a. poetic mind; and though he rarely cultivated his talent for this species of composition, yet he wrote some good hymns, which appear in the collection used in his chapel.* In the last sermon he preached in Argyle Chapel there are no less than thirteen of these poetic scraps. The greater part of them, however, he would no doubt have omitted had he prepared the sermon for the press.

Mr. Jay, through the whole of his ministry, was much in demand for public occasions. For such services he always carefully prepared, and rarely disappointed the expectation of his audience. He felt that it would be unworthy of himself, his subject, and his audience, to come forth with an ill-digested, crude, and hasty effusion of meagre thought, set forth in slovenly language. While, on the other hand, though aware he was surrounded by his ministerial brethren, he did not sacrifice the interests of the people to them, and, instead of producing sermons for edification, attempt to astonish by a display of profound and profitless speculation, or dazzle by an exhibition of vapid elegance, resembling the flash, the rush, the lofty flight and vanishing light of the sky-rocket, but withal as useless as that pyrotechnic exhibition.

He often surprised his audience by the ingenuity he displayed in the appropriation of texts to particular occasions. As specimens of this take the following examples: — On the death of

* It may be gratifying here just to give the numbers of these, as they are not distinguished in the volume by any particular mark. As far as can be ascertained they are the following : — 79, 151, 161, 230, 270,360, 370, 422, 441, 443, 446, 455, 458, 462, 465, 471, 483, 498, 501, 503.

George the Fourth — “Another King, one Jesus.’^ — On the reopening of his chapel after a temporary closing — “A door was opened in heaven.^^ — After an enlargement of the chapel — “Be ye also enlarged.^^ — For a Communion address —” One of you is a devil.^^ “Who but he would have thought of such a passage as this, for the text of a funeral sermon for a great man: “Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen ?^^ From this passage he preached first, after the death of the Rev. E. Hall; and then again at the death of the Rev. Rowland Hill. How poetic, how striking, how appropriate to express the Church’s lament over the grave of one of her most illustrious pastors!

Mr. Jay considered it a solemn duty to take advantage of the times and of public events, to make nature and providence subservient to religious instruction. He generally preached on the seasons of the year; and on national mercies, calamities, and great political occurrences; — but he did not bring politics, in the conventional meaning of that term, into the pulpit.

It need scarcely be said to those who knew Mr. Jay, that he made no use of notes in the pulpit, except occasionally at the very close of his ministry, when he could no longer so implicitly confide in his memory. In his earlier days he wrote his sermons pretty fully, and even where this was not done, most of the leading thoughts had passed through his mind in his previous meditations upon the text or the subject. He did not, however, so closely adhere to his prepared matter as to shut out suggestions that arose at the time; those “living thoughts,^’ as Mr. -Newton used to call them, which came warm and glowing from the heart while he was preaching. He very strongly reprobated the practice of pulpit-readings, and lamented the growing disposition for this among the young ministers of the present day. Where is the practice of reading tolerated except in the Pulpit? Not on the Stage; not in the Senate; not at the Bar. In the time of Charles the Second it was forbidden by statute to the University of Cambridge, which says — “the lazy way of reading sermons began in the time of the Civil Wars,”

It will be seen, by this description, that we do not claim for this eminent preacher any dazzling brilHancy of genius, any profound originality, any power of philosophical analysis, any logical acumen, or even great theological research. To those who can only be pleased with such things, or to others who resolve all pulpit excellence into abstract generalizations, or lofty speculations, or subtle argumentation, Mr. Jay’s sermons presented few attractions. His sound evangelism, his practical wisdom, his rich experience, his strong sense, his melting tenderness, his touching pathos, his beautiful illustrations, his sweet antitheses, his poetic fancy, which procured him, while a living preacher, such wide and continued popularity, and which in his published works will never cease to delight the readers who can be pleased with strong intelligence and true piety — were held in light esteem by those who love to soar in the clouds, or delve in the dark mines of German mysticism.

If Mr. Jay attained to such excellence as a preacher, it was not without great self-culture and laborious endeavours. No doubt there is some truth in the opinion, that there are natural tendencies which lead to distinction in any branch of human pursuit. We need not believe phrenology to admit this. In a qualified sense, Mr. Jay was born a preacher: person, voice, physiological temperament appropriate to this occupation, were all given to him in his physical constitution. But this was not all. If he owed much to those gifts lavished upon him by the hand of God, he owed much also to his own sagacity, diligence, and unwearied endeavours after improvement and distinction. He was a preacher from a boy. His choice of this line of action grew out of his religious convictions and emotions, and was sustained and stimulated by them. He longed to be useful in saving sinners from the condemnation which he had escaped; he saw the power of the pulpit as God’s great instrument for accomplishing this end; and almost from the time of his first entering it, he made it, as we have already said, the object of his hallowed ambition to excel there. In after-life, all his reading, his reflection, and his writing centred in that object. He studied the best models of preaching; learnt French chiefly to read the sermons of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and Saurin, in their own tongue; and attentively perused the Puritan and Nonconformist writers, together with more modern authors of sermons, the better to qualify himself to be a preacher. At home and abroad, when travelling or recreating himself at some watering-place, he was in one sense always sermonizing. He rarely returned to his own house, after a retreat for a while to the coast, without bringing back with him some plans of sermons or texts that had struck him, in his reading or meditations during this season of innocent relaxation from pastoral duties. To be a useful preacher was his aim; and it was thus, by constant and unwearied efibrt, he became one.

And if this were the habitual study of all who are called to occupy the pulpit; if with an intense longing after the salvation of immortal souls, and an unwavering determination to know nothing among men, but Jesus Christ and him crucified; if with a truly philosophical view of the adaptation of preaching to awaken attention and produce impression; if with a recollection of what has been done by the great masters in the art of preaching, — all ministers were to study the best models of evangelical pulpit eloquence, and were to take extraordinary pains to acquire, by the aid of Divine grace, a commanding and interesting style of pulpit address; and, while cherishing a sense of absolute dependence for efficiency upon the work of the Holy Spirit, they were to recollect the Spirit works by appropriate means; and took half the pains to make their speaking in the pulpit as impressive as the actor does to make his successful upon the stage; if

o Q concerning the powerful preaching of the Gospel, they said “this one thing I do,” and called in all collateral aids to do it in the best manner, — we should not hear, as we sometimes do, of the declining power of the pulpit. It is for a wonder, a lamentation, and a reproach, that they who have to do the most momentous work under the sun, give themselves the least pains to do it effectually. Mankind are wrought upon by manner as well as matter. It is an interesting, earnest style of address, that engages attention, reaches the heart, and accomplishes the end of preaching; in the absence of which learning the most profound, and theology the most scriptural, will fail to secure popularity, or to obtain success. It will not do to say, we are so engrossed with the matter of our discourses as to be indifferent to the manner of them. The more important to men’s interests is the matter, the more anxious should we be that in our manner there should be nothing to hinder, but, on the contrary, everything to aid, the success of the matter. That minister who feels called by the Holy Ghost to be a preacher of Christ’s blessed Gospel, ought to feel himself no less called to take all possible pains to do it in the best possible manner.

How eminently Mr. Jay’s efforts to excel in this matter were crowned with success, the reader of the foregoing pages has seen amply illustrated as he has advanced through this volume. We shall here, however, add one more testimony, which, from its impartiality and high respectability, is entitled to much weight. Bishop Shirley, in a letter to the Rev. C. Bridges, says: “I spent two days at Bath, and heard Mr. Jay preach. He is a very extraordinary man. There is a commanding energy in his manner, and a weight in his style, which give authority to what he says, and secure attention; for he is evidently in earnest, and utters the result of much thinking and prayer.” *

* Memoir of Bishop Shirley, p. 68. The letter is dated “Ashbourn, February 18th, 1823.”

If the publication of Mr. Jay’s life should serve no other purpose than to stir up the ministry to a more earnest and anxious endeavour to excel in this their momentous sphere of official duty, and to present to them a model which they shall aim to copy, then it will be a subject of congratulation and thankfulness, that to the world has been given this memoir of one whom Foster designated” The Prince of Preachers.^’

MR. JAY AS AN AUTHOR.

After having expressed our opinion of Mr. Jay as a preacher, we have felt some doubts whether our readers may not think it quite enough, without referring particularly to his authorship. But still there is a sufficient diversity in the two departments to justify a separate notice. The talents which secure success in the one can by no means be taken as a pledge of success in the other. It is a rare thing for a man to excel in both characters, even though the authorship may lie mainly in the line of sermons. Of this Mr. Jay himself seems to have been perfectly conscious; for he did little in the way of authorship, except in connexion with his preaching, as he also did little in the way of public speaking, except from the pulpit. Under a just sense of the limitation of human faculties, he concentrated his upon one object; and that object, gained so conspicuously and successfully, supplied the first and chief inducement to appear as an author; and this rather as an extension of the preacher’s office, or as an enlargement of his audience.

Mr. Jay’s labours as an author were principally pursued at watering-places, during a relaxation of a few weeks in summer. He gives the following brief but interesting account of these labours, in an Advertisement to the last volume of the ‘’ Exercises:” —

“At Sidmouth, he began his * Domestic Ministers* Assistant,’ and wrote

o o 2 many of the Family Prayers. In the Isle of Wight, he composed ‘A Charge to a Minister’s Wife,’ and * The Wife’s Advocate.’ At Lynmouth, he finished his ‘Christian Contemplated,’ and -wrote the Preface; with

* Hints on Preaching.’

“But this latter plaoe must be a little more noticed. There, for several years successively, he passed a month, the most perfectly agreeable and happy he ever experienced in a life of loving-kindness and tender mercy.

“Linton and Lynmouth are nearly connected — the one being at the top and the other at the bottom of a declivity, covered with trees and verdure, interspersed with several houses. Linton has been remarked for its sublimity, and Lynmouth for its beauty, and their united aspects have been called Switzerland in miniature.

“Lynmouth was to the author the most interesting spot. Here, two narrow and craggy valleys, obviously once ruptured by a convulsion of nature, terminate; and down these, tumbling from rock to rock, two streams — one running from the east and the other from the south — unite, and then, in a small distance, empty themselves into the sea.

“At the time of his first going there it was hardly known or considered as a watering-place. It had not, therefore, as yet fallen into the corruptions of such receptacles; nor had the inhabitants been taught to make visitors a prey. The villagers were very respectful; and strangers felt a sense of perfect safety.

“Here the author fixed his residence. He took a whole cottage; it was far from elegant, but it was neat and agreeable; it wanted some accommodation and comforts; but he had what he more prized, rural and enchanting scenery and solitude. Yet not without some to hear the exclamation,

* How sweet this solitude is!’ for he had society too: his company was small, but chosen, and suitable, and improving: —

* Where friendship full exerts her softest power,
Perfect esteem, enlivened by desire
Ineffable, and sympathy of soul — Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will,
With boundless confidence.’

“His associates consisted of his wife and a female friend. It would be vain in him to extol the former; but as for the latter — especially as she was soon removed from our world — he may be allowed to say, we hardly could have had her equal in everything we wished. She was of a very respectable family; well educated, polished in her manners, intellectual, sprightly, witty, truly pious, full of sensibility and benevolence, and an entire stranger to everything like selfishness. What, with regard to this friend, before our first excursion together was acquaintance, was now rendered intimacy the most cordial; and she became a dear resident in the family till her lamented death. The cottage we occupied was near Mr. Herries’s beautiful villa. It has since been spoiled by improvements, and is now a kind of tawdry little mansion; and the whole of Lynmouth itself, which taste might have altered, and yet left it a village still, is aping a paltry town.

“Here our party felt themselves at liberty to meet or to separate — to read or to write — or to converse or to walk — as inclination prompted. As to himself, the author opened his parlour, and spoke on the Sabbath-day evening to any of the neighbours who would attend. But having been struck with the design, and also having been urged to undertake something of the kind, he now began his * Morning Exercises.’ Of these, he here often wrote two, and sometimes three, a-day; and always read one of them in the morning and another in the evening devotion, and not often without the approbation of his companions, which most excited and encouraged him to proceed.

“Here he composed the greater part of these Morning Exercises, and here also, in after visits, he wrote the greater part of the Evening. He once thought of distinguishing by a final mark all he had written in this retirement; but not doing it immediately, his recollection soon became too indistinct for him to divide with certainty. The first ‘Exercise ’ he wrote was that which is entitled, * The Unlonely Solitude,’ — John xvi. 32: * And shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.’

“He wished also to have marked those which he wrote as he journeyed to and from Lynmouth. At the * Plume of Feathers,’ Minehead, where he slept as he was going down, he composed the Exercise, called * The Pious Excursion,’ — 1 Sam. iii. 9: ‘Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth>’ especially in reference to such a journey of recreation. At the same inn, as he retui-ned, he composed the Exercise, entitled ‘The Call to Depart,’ — Micah ii. 10: ‘Arise, and depart hence; for this is not your rest.’ He also wrote a third Exercise at the same inn, viz., — * Changes in the wilderness not a removal from it,’ — Numb. x. 12: * And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai j and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran.’

“The author cannot conclude without obseiving two things: — the Jirst is. That relaxation is never so perfectly enjoyed as in connexion with engagement.

‘A want of occupation is not rest;
A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.*

“Relaxation, indeed, can have no existence separate from employment, for what is there then to relax /rom? On the other hand, action prepares for repose, and labour not only sweetens, hut justifies recreation; so that we feel it to he, not only innocent indulgence, hut a kind of recompense. The second is, That, as of such a precious talent as time nothing should he lost, BO, much may he done by gathering up its fragments.”

The peculiar charm which his sermons derived from his oratory and elocution could not, of course, attend his publications, and yet, when divested of this fascination, they exhibited other charms and excellences, which secured for them, not only attention, but admiration, popularity, and usefulness. His compositions, when they came from the press, were greatly improved and chastened, both in thought and diction. What they lost of effect given them by his delivery, they gained in correctness, condensation, and point. Mr. Jay well understood that sermons printed must be skilfully prepared for the eye, which is a more critical judge than the ear. The single sermons which he first published were, no doubt, greatly aided in their success by the popularity of the yoimg preacher. Moreover, his promotion so early to the pulpit of Surrey Chapel placed him on a pinnacle before the religious world of London; so that when he sent forth his first volume of sermons, which was as early as 1802, a wide circle of readers was anxiously waiting to peruse them. The moderation of sentiment these sermons displayed, as contrasted with the Antinomianism into which some were running, both in the Establishment and among the Dissenters, — their originality, simplicity, ease, and general adaptation to the state of the public mind, commanded for them a measure of success which rarely attends volumes of sermons in the present day, and still more rarely those from the pens of Dissenters. It may be fairly alleged, that, at the period when Mr. Jay first appeared as an author, there was a new and grcwing desire to peruse good and evangelical sermons; and that Mr. Jay’s were eminently suited to the taste of the day; and it would be no disparagement to admit further, that in some respects they are less suited to the taste of the present day; or, rather, that as good sermons are now so abundant from the pulpit, there is less need of supplying them from the press; and, in consequence, few volumes of sermons now obtain popularity, unless they are highly elaborate, on novel subjects, or characterized by eminent genius or transcendent eloquence.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Jay’s sermons were happily suited to meet the increasing desire at that time for evangelical instruction. Whitfield and Wesley, with their co-workers and followers, had given the people a taste for something better than they had been accustomed to in the dry ethical essays of the clergy, as void of effect upon the audience, as of heart and life in the preacher. Mr. Jay’s sermons, therefore, were perhaps as much used in pulpits as in private houses, and might be heard in many a church, and found attractive to many a congregation of Churchmen. Some of the more liberal of the clergy recommended them to their brethren, and to their people; and this was especially the case with those who were alarmed at the spread of Antinomianism. The appearance of the successive volumes of Mr. Jay’s sermons, and their increasing popularity, was a pleasing omen of the sounder views which were beginning to prevail. Indeed it may be stated, that the influence of the Antinomian preacher began to decrease about this time, and has been sinking till it can scarcely be said to retain an existence either in the Church or out of it. A few scattered individuals are all that can now be found, where formerly hundreds congregated to listen to high doctrine; and among other useful works, no doubt Mr. Jay’s have had a share of influence in promoting sounder views and a more Scriptural taste. An evidence of this is seen in the fact that Mr. Jay was singled out by Bishop

Jebb, and recommended to his friend, Alexander Knox, as a pattern of sobriety and moderation of sentiment. He says in one of his letters: —

“It seems to me as if the more sober Calvinists, both in and out of the Church of England, were not a little alarmed by the prevalence of virtual, if not as yet practical, Antinomianism. There has been a good deal to that purpose, I mean expressive of that alarm, in the ‘Christian Observer.’ But the Independent minister at Bath, Jay, has lately published a volume of lectures, called ‘The Christian Contemplated,’ in the preface to which are some pertinent, and I might say happy, remarks. It will be worth your while to get the book, were it only for the sake of the preface; but the book itself is worth looking over, for, though it has its defects and failings, it abounds in matter which tends to edify the reader, and do real honours to the writer.’’*

In speaking once upon this subject he observed, that, though election was true, it did not appear to him a truth of equal importance with perseverance; and that in preaching we must not only distinguish between truth and error, but between truth and truth. It was a truth that our Saviour died under Pontius Pilate, and a truth that his death was an atonement for sin; but who would attach the same importance to both? So was it here. He did not conceive that there was any danger in preaching election in its effects; and that it must always be remembered, that perseverance was a duty enjoined by 2 Pet. i. 5 — 10, &c., and as a privilege promised in Phil. i. 6, &c.; and that this twofold view ought always to be remembered.

He said that Mr. Newton, at one of those breakfasts where he received ministers of all denominations, among other observations, made the following: — he said, that” Calvinism was one

* Thirty Years’ Correspondence between John Jebb, D.D., F.R.S., Bishop of Limerick, and Alexander Knox, Esq., M.R.I.A., vol. ii. p. 557.

of the worst of systems preached theoretically, but one of the best preached practically.^’ Mr. Jay added, that if he called any man master on earth it would be Leighton or Newton.

This just and scriptural moderation of sentiment, which through life distinguished Mr. Jay, both as a preacher and an author, commended him to the approval of the best part of the Christian body, both in the Established Church and among Dissenters. For this sobriety and comprehensiveness of view he was probably greatly indebted to his excellent tutor, whose large experience and acute observation, in the days when there existed considerable conflict and contention among theologians of adverse schools in connexion with his loving spirit and persuasive manner, qualified him to guard young minds against excess and extravagance. The same moderation of sentiment seems to have distinguished most of Mr. Winter’s students. It is, moreover, a remarkable fact, that this sobriety was far from being associated with tameness or indifference. It was rather accompanied with eminent zeal, devotedness, and usefulness. It was very evident that Mr. Jay’s supreme aim was to be scriptural in all his religious sentiments. He bowed submissively to the Divine authority. Every statement is both illustrated and confirmed by the most apposite and striking quotations. Hence, too, Mr. Jay seems never to shrink from the appearance of paradox, when it arises from the strength of Scripture language in enforcing important truths separately. He had from the commencement of his course kept himself clear of the trammels of systematic theology; and was only concerned to bring the truth of God, as it appears in the Bible, to bear upon the hearts and consciences of men. Hence the constant interweaving of Scripture in every sermon — a practice which he avows and defends in the preface to “The Christian Contemplated,” where he quotes, with warm approbation, the following judicious and beautiful defence of this practice, from the pen of Robert Hall, in his strictures upon Fosters Essay, which at that day stirred up no little controversy, and which was entitled —” On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion/^ Mr. Jay hailed this vindication of the use of Scriptural language, from so high an authority, though he suspects the same authority might censure himself for using it to excess; yet that he would still allow it was an error on the safer side.

“To say nothing,^’ observes Mr. Hall,” of the inimitable beauties of the Bible, considered in a literary view, — which areuniversally acknowledged, — it is the Book which every devout man is accustomed to consult as the oracle of God; it is the companion of his best moments, and the vehicle of his strongest consolation. Intimately associated in his mind with everything dear and valuable, its diction more powerfully excites devotional feeling than any other; and, when temperately and soberly used, imparts an unction to a religious discourse, which nothing else can supply. Besides, is there not room to apprehend, that a studied avoidance of the Scripture phraseology, and a care to express all that it is supposed to contain in the forms of classical diction, might ultimately lead to the neglect of the Scriptures themselves, and a habit of substituting flashy and superficial declamation, in the room of the saving truths of the G ospel? Such an apprehension is but too much verified by the most celelebrated sermons of the French, and still more by some modern compositions in our own. language, which usurp that title. For devotional impression, we conceive that a very considerable tincture of the language of Scripture, or at least such a colouring as shall discover an intimate acquaintance with those inimitable models, will generally succeed best.^’

The copious use which Mr. Jay made of Scripture language, both in preaching and writing, gives his compositions a peculiar character. It is a feature which strikes every one as prominent, and we think, while it yields the highest satisfaction to every reader who peruses his books for edification and instruction, it can excite displacency in no one. There can be little doubt that the eminent success of Mr. Jay in all his publications is a sufficient vindication of his practice, especially when it is considered, that the success of such writings must be taken as an indication of their usefulness. They minister nothing to the amusement of mankind; nothing to the gratification of a mere literary taste, or fondness for speculation; nothing to elegant scholarship, or dialectic skill, or a fervid imagination; but are the plain and forcible statements of evangelical truth, “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but,” to a great extent,” which the Holy Ghost teacheth;’’ and as such, their extensive and continued popularity both vindicates the judgment of the writer, and commends the good sense and piety of his numerous Christian readers. Mr. Jay may not be an author suited to the taste of every reader, but he wrote for the many, and they have been his readers. He is not learned enough for some, nor profound enough for others; not critical enough for one, nor rhetorical enough for a second, nor imaginative enough for a third; but had he commended himself to the approbation of such readers, he would have had a much narrower circle than he has had, and still has. Nature, or rather the God of nature, formed his mind in one of its most current types, and to serve the greatest number, by exhibiting to them, in the most impressive, instructive, and successful forms, not the rarities of intellectual treasures, not the elaborations of human thought, nor the choicest and most sparkling gems of genius, but truths of universal importance and of daily practice. He aimed at the useful and substantial, and had little taste for the subtle, the recondite, or the profound. His mission was to preach the Gospel of the grace of God, which he had received, and to extend the benefit of what he had preached by books, for the service of those who had not the privilege of hearing him.

In his compositions, the critic may find many faults which passed unobserved from the pulpit. But though sometimes his style would admit of improvement in respect to refinement and polish,, yet, in perspicuity, simplicity, and force, it is admirably adapted to the purpose of instruction. It is perfectly transparent and intelligible to all, and though occasionally, through his anxiety to be impressive, and to fix the truth in the mind, he indulges in an expression or a word that is too coarse or beneath his subject, yet it is so obviously for the sake of point and effect, that good taste can hardly be ofiended, while the less fastidious reader is better pleased with the homeliness and point, and possibly feels the truth conveyed more efiectually to his mind.

Eminently practical in all his views of Divine truth, he derives useful lessons from almost every part of Scripture; and places duties in new lights and relations, which impart fresh force and interest to them. He had no doubt profited much in his composition in later years by the long and extensive practice he had undergone, and which, from the advice of Mrs. Hannah More to write much and fast, he seems early to have adopted.

Every Christian reader of Mr. Jay’s works must be impressed with the pleasingly devotioual turn of his mind. His reflections lead the pious and devout to the most elevated views of the Dildne character, as a Father to be loved, and a Friend to be trusted. Every page seems to exercise over the mind an attraction to the Source of all wisdom, blessedness, and grace; and every sentiment seems bathed with the spirit of devotion, and designed to win the heart for God and truth.

Another feature in Mr. Jay’s writings is the skill with which, without apparent effort, he throws new beauty into the text, and by a few happy sentences, sets the sacred word in a novel and interesting, and often strong, light. It is as if he placed the reader in a position from which he could discover new lustre in the jewel of Divine truth. He makes it flash its radiance upon the mind’s eye with a power and beauty unperceived before. And, moreover, not simply as thus condensing the force of isolated truths upon the mind, but in the important and most useful capacity of an expositor, he is conspicuously successful. His large knowledge of the Scripture, and his intimate insight into its special import, and his holy ingenuity in discovering uses to which its facts and lessons may be turned, qualify him in a high degree to expound the sacred word. With an unrivalled force and effect does he bring out the hidden beauties of revelation, and enchain the mind to the truths of Gods word. There was a startling originality sometimes in his application of texts, which interested and delighted the auditor, and fixed the attention more on the word of God than on the preacher or the writer. But he never pursued originality for its own sake, nor sought, as many have done, and are still doing, to affect novelty of thought by mere novelty of phrase. The new idioms and the new terminology are found, when translated into pure English, to contain little more than old and common ideas; often they are a mere wrappage of grotesque or pompous phraseology thrown around poverty of thought and vulgar superficiality. But, in his own department, Mr. Jay was really an original thinker, and his thoughts engage, instruct, and delight the mind. His aim is always exalted, his means always legitimate, his motives always pure, and his success often distinguished.

In confirmation of our own estimate of his publications, it will probably now be interesting to the reader to be informed, upon the best authority, how his works have been received among the Christian bodies of the New World; and where, never having heard his voice, they judge of him exclusively as an author. Mr. Jay himself sometimes alludes to the extensive sale and usefulness of his writings in America, and we shall, therefore, here introduce some extracts from the pen of a distinguished American divine, who published an article more than twenty years ago in an American periodical, in which he reviewed the principal works of Mr. Jay, which had then been reprinted in that country. In pointing out these peculiar excellences, he thus concludes his review: — (The article is from the pen of the Rev. W. B. Spraguey D.D., and appeared in” The Quarterly Christian Spectator.’’ It was afterwards published separately.)

“If the estimate which we have formed of the character of Mr. Jay’s publications be correct, it must be obvious to every one that they are designed to have an important influence in forming the religious character of the age; to say nothing of the more remote influence which they must exert upon posterity. We will consider, under a few distinct particulars, what are the effects which have followed, or may be expected to follow, from the labours of this popular and excellent author.

“Mr. Jay’s writings, if we mistake not, are peculiarly adapted to promote the study of the Bible. Not only are the * Morning and Evening Exercises for the Closet,’ directly of a biblical character, being designed as a sort of practical commentary on various portions of divine truth, but nearly all his other writings abound in scriptural illustration, and are pre-eminently fitted to invest the study of the Bible with strong attractions. No writer of the present day makes a more copious use of Scripture than Mr. Jay; and we might say, that in his sermons he sometimes carries this to an extreme, were it not for the uncommonly felicitous manner in which his quotations are made. It would seem as if the whole Bible were in his memory, and he had the power, on every occasion, of selecting the very passage that is most to his purpose; and when a writer quotes Scripture with such an advantage, we can scarcely call any degree of quotation excessive.

“If Mr. Jay should be thought by some to urge to an extreme in respect to the direct use which he makes of Scripture in his public discourses, we are constrained to believe that there is a tendency among many preachers, in this country at least, to the opposite end. We certainly do not wish to be brought back to the practice of some of our venerable fathers, who not only were accustomed to string together many passages of Scripture, often without much regard to connexion, but detained their hearers by turning over the leaves of the Bible to look these passages out j but we do wish that every sermon should have so much of the Bible in it, either as it respects language or spirit, that it shall be obvious to every hearer that it is drawn directly from that sacred book. It were reasonable to expect that

God should put special power into his own word; and hence we find that the frequent introduction of Scripture language into a sermon imparts to it, in the view of the pious, a kind of unction which it can derive from nothing else. So, too, all experience proves, that there is no argument so strong as “thus saith the Lord;” and many a mind which has warred through a long course of metaphysical reasoning, has been fixed in its convictions by one plain declaration of the Bible.

*#♦*♦#

“Mr. Jay’s writings are also eminently distinguished for their Practical Tendency. They are indeed by no means deficient in the exhibition of Scripture doctrines, but whenever doctrines are discussed, it is always in a practical way. They are not taken up as abstract propositions, but are presented just as they are found in God’s word, and as they stand related to the experience and conduct of men. They are more commonly adapted to make men acquainted with their own hearts; to carry them back to the very springs of their actions; and to impress them with the conviction that the whole of religion is a practical reality. We are not aware that Mr. Jay has written anything of a merely speculative character; whatever has come from his pen, so far as we know, has an important bearing upon practice, and is fitted to exert a benign and elevating influence upon human character.

“It has been a characteristic of some periods of the Church, that they have been distinguished by a rage for speculation. No one can go back to the time of the latter Christian fathers, or to the days of Thomas Aquinas, without being forcibly struck by the endlessly diversified and hair-breadth distinctions which were then resorted to, in illustration and defence of Scripture doctrine; and it were hardly necessary to say, that an age which had so much in its character that was speculative could not be distinguished by religious action. It was common, in those days, for men to exhaust all their powers in endeavouring to settle points which did not admit of being settled, and which, if they had been, would not make one hair white or black, as it respects the salvation of men, or the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. The lamentable result was, that, while men were spending their lives in metaphysical quibbling, the great cause for which the Saviour shed his blood seemed to stand still, if not to be on the retrograde; and the revival of the spirit of religious action did not take place until the rage for vain speculation had begun in some measure to die away. If we do not greatly mistake, wherever the doctrines of the Gospel are exhibited in connexion with much of human philosophy, and encumbered by the technology of the schools, they will be found to a great extent inefficacious, and the Church will be found proportionably listless and inactive. But when these truths are presented in their naked simplicity, and brought home to the mind and heart as common-sense realities, without having their influence in any degree neutralized by foreign admixtures, they will be found quick and powerful; and it may reasonably be expected that in such a community there will be a waking from the dreams of carelessness,

and a spirit of benevolent activity going forth to bless the world.

“One great secret of the charm which pervades Mr. Jay’s writings is, that he ranges through every department of human experience, and shows that the Spirit has its appropriate teachings for every condition. Their tendency is not only to make man do right in all circumstances, but to do right intelligently, and upon principle.

“It is another characteristic of Mr. Jay’s writings, that they are eminently fitted to cherish a devotional spirit. We have already had occasion to remark, that his “Family Prayers,” while they show the fertility of his mind, the purity of his taste, and the originality and beauty of his conceptions, also breathe, in an uncommon degree, the spirit of genuine devotion. But most of his other writings, though they are designed primarily to instruct, and are indeed, in a high degree, instructive, are delightfully pervaded by the same spirit. His * Morning and Evening Exercises ’ are particularly designed to be the companion of the closet; and it would seem scarcely possible that they should be used by any Christian, as they were intended to be, without bringing him into an appropriate frame for communion with God.

“It will be obvious to any one who reflects how much the present age is characterized by the spirit of active enterprise, that there is danger that it will sufier in its devotional character; danger that, while Christians have their hands full of work, their hearts will be comparatively barren of devout exercises; that their active efforts in building up the kingdom of Christ will be suffered to interfere with the more retired business of keeping their hearts and communing with God. “We do not complain that the religious character of the age has too much in it that is practical; but we have much reason to fear that many Christians of the present day sometimes render apologies to their consciences for a partial neglect of their closets, on the ground that their time is so much engrossed by duties of a public nature that they have little left for anything else. Whenever this state of things exists, it is an evil which ought at once to be corrected; for not only does it indicate an approaching decline of the spirit of piety, but it looks as if the spirit of benevolent action would not endure; and whenever the Christian loses sight of his dependence on God, in his benevolent efforts, he may rest assured, either that his zeal will soon languish, or that his efforts will be unsuccessful.

“Another striking characteristic of Mr. Jay’s writings is, that they exhibit, in the best sense, a truly catholic spirit. Not that there is anything in them that looks like lowering the standard of Christian doctrine or practice, or of yielding up anything that is essential in religion — far from it. The great doctrines and duties of the Gospel are constantly stated and urged in all their importance; and erroneous doctrines and practices meet with their deserved condemnation. But, after all, the author never seems to be trammelled by sectarian peculiarities; and scarcely ever occupies ground upon which he would not be cordially met by Christians of every evangelical denomination. This, no doubt, is one great reason of the universal popularity his writings have gained both in Great Britain and this country; and hence, too, we have found many who had been long conversant with his writings, who yet had never been able to discover to what denomination he belonged, and some who had always had the impression that, instead of being an Independent, as he actually is, he is a (low church) Episcopalian. No doubt he has his attachment to Independency; but it is so far from being a bigoted attachment, that he opens the arms of his charity wide to every evangelical Christian, let his denomination be what it may. Men may differ from him in many unimportant particulars, and yet, instead of standing aloof from them, as errorists, he cordially welcomes them as fellow-disciples of a common Master.

“The spirit of Christian Catholicism which Mr, Jay’s writings evince, is what we wish to see more and more extensively pervade the religious community. We are by no means disposed to plead for an annihilation of sects, or for any attempt to range all the followers of Christ under the same human banner. On the contrary, we fully believe that the division of the Christian world into various denominations is not without some important uses; and that, if its legitimate influence is not neutralized by unchristian jealousies and alienations, it may hasten rather than retard the

ultimate triumph of the Church.

*****

“Let the delightful spirit which Mr. Jay has exemplified in his writings pervade all the different communities of the followers of Christ, and, though we may still have different denominations, yet it will be manifest that there is but one body. Under such an influence, the world will be compelled again to the exclamations which were made in the early ages of the church, ‘Behold how these Christians love one another! ’

p P” In the writings of Mr. Jay there is a remarkable consistency, and they are fitted, in an eminent degree, to form a consistent religious character. One principal reason why most of the professed followers of Christ exert so little influence in favour of his cause is, that their Christian character is marred by such palpable inconsistency. This inconsistency results from the very estimate which they form of the comparative importance of different duties; and from the neglect of some, or other, or all of the duties of the Christian life.

* * * *

“Now if we do not mistake, Mr. Jay’s writings are not more remarkable for anything than their tendency to counteract this evil. They bring before us with great felicity, and without any apparent reference to system, the various duties of men, just as they are inculcated in God’s word, giving to each its proportionate importance. There is no elevating faith at the expense of works, or zeal at the expense of morality, or alms at the expense of prayer; but each duty stands forth with its own claims, holding its appropriate place. In short, we know of few writings which are fitted to make an impression more, in this respect, like that of the Bible itself, than those of Mr. Jay. Whoever reads them attentively, and imbibes their spirit, will not be punctilious in respect to one set of duties, and lax in regard to another; but he will be attentive to all; and under such an influence his Christian character, instead of being unsightly and monstrous, will develop itself in fair and beautiful proportions.

“After what we have already said of Mr. Jay’s writings, we scarcely need add, that they are fitted to form Christian character on the most lovely and attractive model. It cannot be disguised, that, as the beauty of Christian doctrine has sometimes been marred by human philosophy, so the loveliness of Christian example has been obscured by what has almost seemed a cold and lowering melancholy. There have been those, and they are yet to be found, who appear habitually gloomy from principle; who set down the playfulness and buoyancy of the animal spirits to the account of an inveterate waywardness; and who never venture to speak on the subject of religion at all, but with what seems an air of affected solemnity. ♦,

“If irreligious persons are liable to be confirmed in their irreligion, by the careless and trifling deportment of professed Christians, they are not less exposed to the same evil by seeing a Christian profession constantly associated with a morose and forbidding gloom. Let religion be exhibited in all its cheerful attractions, while yet it retains its appropriate seriousness and dignity, and it cannot fail to commend itself to the judgment, and conscience, and better feelings of all who witness such a manifestation.

“There are few men probably to whom the present age is more indebted for whatever of consistent cheerfulness its religious character may possess, than to Mr. Jay. Other writers, as we have already intimated, may have done more than he to rouse the slumbering conscience of the sinner, and bring him into- the attitude of conviction and repentance; but few, we think, have done more to hold up religion to the world in all its divine and beautiful attractions. We cannot take leave of this interesting and popular writer, without commending his writings to every class of our readers. We would commend them especially to the young Christian, as being eminently fitted to form him to a high degree of religious enjoyment, activity, and usefulness. We would commend them to the man who would know most of the windings of his own heart, and would have maxims of true practical wisdom in his own mind, to regulate every part of his conduct. We would commend them even to the man who scoffs at religion as a fable; for if he can contemplate that view of the Gospel which these writings present, without acknowledging that it is consistent, beautiful, even glorious, then it is because he belies his own convictions, or because his infidelity has made him a madman.”

Though this extract is long, yet it seemed the most appropriate, complete, and satisfactory testimony we could supply of the popularity and usefulness of Mr. Jay’s writings in that extensive and populous country, where they are, to say the least, as widely known and as much admired as in Great Britain. The long-established and well-earned reputation of the writer adds weight to his judicious and discriminating observations. Our own opinions and remarks, previously given, coincide, in the main, with those of Dr. Sprague. Mr. Jay studied, and preached, and wrote for the Christian community at large. He wished the whole world to hear and to read, in the most intelligible and impressive terms, the Gospel of the grace of God; and he wrote, therefore, in the common dialect, as the best vehicle for the truth of God; but this he wrought into a poHshed shaft, and gave it a direct and successful aim.

The admirers of sustained and impassioned eloquence, or of a magniloquent style, or even of a purely classic diction, will find little to satisfy them, much less to fascinate them, in the volumes of Mr. Jay’s works; but all who desire to see the truths of Divine Revelation treated in their variety and comprehensiveness, their admonitions enforced in winning and persuasive words, with manly dignity. Christian simplicity, and apostolic earnestness; all who read religious books for instruction and improvement, to have the heart warmed, and the life corrected, — will find Mr. Jay’s works a treasury which will never disappoint them, and which they will not soon exhaust. Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey, in a passage quoted in an early part of the Autobiography, compared Mr. Jay’s mind to “a clear, transparent spring, flowing so freely as to impress us with the idea of its being inexhaustible;” and such is but a just description of those volumes which so powerfully afiected that versatile and exquisite genius, considered, as he probably was, the most accomplished and keen-sighted man of his day: — but not him only; for thousands and tens of thousands, in almost every rank of life, are daily benefited, and will continue to be benefited, by the writings of William Jay. We can desiderate for them no happier or greater success than that which the man of taste, abeady mentioned, indicated as their characteristic —” the voice which calls us to look into ourselves, and prepare for judgment, is too piercing, too powerful, to be resisted, and we attempt, for worldly nd sensual considerations, to shut our ears in vaiii.’’