Probation implies the suspension of retribution. There is no evidence that this condition is met beyond death, while the argument is overwhelming that punishment begins at the cessation of life. Even upon the theory of an intermediate place, those who die in their sins, go to the nether division of Hades to suffer. If Dives were only in that halfway place, he was already under the sweep of retribution, as Father Abraham bid him remember.

Probation implies the continued mediation of Christ. There is no evidence that this can be obtained after death. The only shadow of encouragement to this effect is that, if Christ went to Hades, if his preaching was anything more than the proclamation to the patriarchs of the accomplished redemption, if he appointed there any means of grace and made provision for the perpetuation of the same, it may be that His mediation can there be secured. Yet even this is to be believed without any knowledge that a single spirit did repent under the preaching of Christ, or ever will repent under that system of things, while the whole tenor of God's Word implies that Christ ends his work of grace with the closing of the life of each person.

Probation implies, as an element, the influence of the Holy Spirit. No man will ever repent without it. Even in this life the exhortation is needed: "Quench not the Spirit;" "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." To have "done despite to the Spirit of grace," was a part of the solemn iudictment against those who were worthy of the "sorer punishment " than that of the sinner against Moses' law, and to whom there is a "certain fearful looking for of judgment." God declared that his Spirit should not always strive with man. And there is no evidence that this gentle spirit, so easily to be grieved, will continue to strive with the souls of men after they have rejected a lifetime of his interposition. The sin against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven in the world to come; and who knows but that all who die in their sins, resisting the Holy Spirit to the very last, do thereby commit that remediless sin, and thus forever cut themselves off from forgiveness.

Probation implies, as an element, good social influence. We know not how much our virtue is indebted to the restraints and incitements of our surroundings. In the fellowship of a spiritual exaltation many a covenant with death is disannulled, which no ordinary agency would ever have shaken. But after death these social influences cease to operate. The departed spirit is removed from communion with friends on the earth; and, impenitent, it is separated from the righteous in the unseen world; all of its associations are with the wicked, while its own depravity is let loose only to reveal new horrors in its desperateness; and the devil, who had before allured it to vice, delights to torment the victim of his seductions.

Probation implies discipline. But in the world-to-come the helpful discipline of this life is turned to punishment, and penal infliction upon an obstinate sinner will never lead him to repentance and faith and love. It does not so work in this life. Criminals are rarely softened by imprisonment. While affliction is made a blessing to the righteous, suffering, unattended by the grace of God, does not prove reformatory even in this life. Confine an immortal soul in the agonies of Hades, and it will find no discipline there. Conscience, with renewed power, will continue its work of retribution, itself a hell. The sinful character will reproduce itself and so necessitate perpetual infliction.

And so in that period just beyond this life we find none of the essential elements of probation. What then will a sinful soul do, stripped of all this probationary interposition, but plunge deeper and deeper into perdition?

ARTICLE III.- HENRY WARD BEECHER.

The Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. From verbatim reports. By T. J. ELLINWOOD. Plymouth Pulpit; First Series: September, 1868-March,

1869.

Plymouth Pulpit; A Weekly Publication of Sermons. 1869– 1870. New York: J. B. Ford & Co., No. 39 Park Row.

ONE cannot help experiencing a twinge, call it of modesty or shame, when he attempts to forestall posterity and to write a critique of a living contemporary, of one whom he may call a friend. No one likes to praise or blame a man to his face. Mr. Beecher, perhaps, is an exception to other men. He has had praises that have exalted him till he has touched the stars with lofty head, and vilifications that have sunk him to the lowest abyss. He probably by this time is so used to such words that he " cares for none of these things." We, however, must still confess to a certain shamefacedness in this mat ter, and for that reason declare that we are not talking of Mr. Beecher, but only of the popular preacher, the preacher to the people, although before we get through we may make some particular mention of him by way of forcible illustration.

Who are the people? When we speak of the people in connection with the monarchical and aristocratic countries of the Old World, we do indeed have a different idea in our minds from that which we have in speaking of the people of our own country. In the Old World the people form the lower classes, the subject and abject classes, with little or no cultivation, the rude, unwashed, unknown; but with us how different! Among what we call the people there are all grades of intelligence and education, as may be seen in any of our religious congregations or assemblages for political purposes. In fact, the true idea of the people is not that of the educated or the ignorant classes, but the great body of humanity, who have

the common attributes of humanity-reason, conscience, and heart-who have souls that Christ came to save. These are to be reached with the gospel. The truth is to be so preached as to pierce through the accidental, and to come to the essential, in humanity. Prejudices and opinions are not to be addressed, but minds and souls. These minds and souls made by God, under whatever garb or form of humanity they be, are to be reached by the truth which God also made. This is to be done by having a genuine love and sympathy for the people. Honor to the scholar who is a true-hearted loving man, for he holds the world in his hand; but the mere scholar sometimes loses utterly this power of sympathy with common men. He contemns and despises them in his secret heart because they do not know the things he does. He looks upon them as belonging to the barbarous world of Philistinism. He is not their brother. He does not love them. He can talk eloquently about humanity, but he can respect nothing but learning, and those whom he esteems learned. He belongs to a caste. He is of the few, not of the many. He has worked out of the ocean-currents of human life into a side-eddy, or pool, where he goes round and round in a ceaseless circle. He has in this sense at least become a smaller man, though a more learned Now with such a heart, though he may be a good man still, is he fit to preach? He has in fact too little of the spirit of the gospel. He has lost sight of the large interests of humanity, and therefore with all his scholarship and discipline of thought he is a dry man, an unmagnetic man, an ineloquent orator, a barren preacher, one who cannot reach a living soul; and what honest man with homely thoughts and common sorrows will care for what he says, or go to him for counsel or strength in his soul's troubles? There is too little common ground or love between them.

one.

And, again, to win this royal name of a preacher to the people, one must be willing to preach so plainly that the people can understand him. He must come down from the high and lofty style to the plain style-to "the low style "—of Augustine. And since we quote Augustine, we will quote him again to the same point, which, great genius as he was, he faithfully illustrated in his own preaching; he says: “It is

better that the learned should find fault than that the people should not understand." The people must first know the truth, and then the truth will make them free; and is it not a greater intellectual achievement to make an illiterate man clearly understand what the act of Faith is, than to construct a metaphysical theory of faith that shall interest the most philosophical mind in the audience?

Then, again, to be a popular preacher in the true sense-one must preach on the level of common peoples' thoughts and ideas. Popularity depends on an intuitive perception of what interests the people-what ideas, facts, arguments, illus. trations, come home to them and are received with eagerness and delight. The preacher must not strike too high nor too low, but must gauge the common mind with happy exactitude. Not that he may not sometimes lift himself and his audience into a higher plane of ideas, for the common mind is not devoid of strong sense, rapid perception, and the power of being moved by great thoughts; but one may stray far out of the popular way of thinking, and get into abstractions. He must go right to the heart of the matter. He must be great enough to comprehend the popular mind, to know the avenues that lead to it, and he must especially be willing to confine himself to the present-to the last war rather than to the last Punic war-drawing his illustrations from the house, the field, the market. from the sky that every one sees every day, and the earth that every one treads every day. He must make use of the true, not the artificial proof. The motives that impel men to bargains and trade, they understand better than transcendental reasons. The real rather than the ideal interests them. There must be some foundation of practical truth in what is said, for the popular mind wearies of pure invention and keeps on the solid earth, where, too, there are springs of poetry and beauty. Such a preacher was St. John Chrysostom in the old Greek empire, of whom the people said, it was better for the sun to cease shining than for him to cease speaking.

And yet, again, in order to be a preacher to the people one must preach with feeling and conviction. It must be a real thing and not something put on. Here has been the power of