the worldly and the indifferent, from cold hearts and
unfurnished heads.

"From his affectionate warmth, however, and his unremitting application,
arising from the vast importance he attaches to the worth of souls, the
man of the world might honor him with the title of enthusiast; while his
prudence, sober-mindedness, and regularity, would draw on him from the
fanatic, the appellation of formalist. Though he is far from being
'content to _dwell_ in decencies,' he is careful never to neglect them.
He is a clergyman all the week as well as on Sunday; for he says, if he
did not spend much of the intermediate time in pastoral visits, there
could not be kept up that mutual intercourse of kindness which so much
facilitates his own labors, and his people's improvement. They listen to
him because they love him, and they understand him, because he has
familiarized them by private discourse to the great truths which he
delivers from the pulpit.

"Dr. Barlow has greatly diminished the growth of innovation in his
parishes, by attacking the innovator with his own weapons. Not indeed by
stooping to the same disorderly practices, but by opposing an
enlightened earnestness to an eccentric earnestness; a zeal _with_
knowledge to a zeal _without_ it. He is of opinion that activity does
more good than invective, and that the latter is too often resorted to,
because it is the cheaper substitute.

"His charity, however, is large, and his spirit truly catholic. He
honors all his truly pious brethren, who are earnest in doing good,
though they may differ from him as to the manner of doing it. Yet his
candor never intrenches on his firmness; and while he will not dispute
with others about shades of difference, he maintains his own opinions
with the steadiness of one who embraced them on the fullest conviction.

"He is a 'scholar, and being a good and a ripe one,' it sets him above
aiming at the paltry reputation to be acquired by those false
embellishments of style, those difficult and uncommon words, and that
labored inversion of sentences, by which some injudicious clergymen make
themselves unacceptable to the higher, and unintelligible to the lower,
and of course, the larger part of their audience. He always bears in
mind that the common people are not foolish, they are only ignorant. To
meet the one he preaches good sense, to suit the other, plain language.
But while he seldom shoots over the heads of the uninformed, he never
offends