the exercise of
wisdom and judgment than another, it is a religious clergyman.
Christianity does not supersede the use of natural gifts, but turns them
into their proper channel.

"One distinction has often struck me. The enemy of mankind seizes on the
soul through the medium of the passions and senses: the divine friend of
man addresses him through his rational powers--_the eyes of your
understanding being enlightened_, says the Apostle."

Here I ventured to observe, that the highest panegyric bestowed on one
of the brightest luminaries of our church is, that his name is seldom
mentioned without the epithet _judicious_ being prefixed to it. Yet does
Hooker want fervor? Does Hooker want zeal? Does Hooker want courage in
declaring the whole counsel of God?

"I hope," said Sir John, "we have now no clergymen to whom we may apply
the biting sarcasm of Dr. South on some of the popular but illiterate
preachers of the opposite party in his day, 'that there was all the
confusion of Babel without the gift of tongues.'"

"And yet," returned Mr. Stanley, "that party produced some great
scholars, and many eminently pious men. But look back to that day, and
especially to the period a little antecedent to it, at those prodigies
of erudition, the old bishops and other divines of our church. They
were, perhaps, somewhat too profuse of their learning in their
discourses, or rather they were so brimful, that they involuntarily
overflowed. A juster taste, in our time, avoids that lavish display
which then not only crowded the margin, but forced itself into every
part of the body of the work. The display of erudition might be wrong,
but one thing is clear, it proved they had it; and, as Dryden said, when
he accused of having too much wit, 'after all, it is a good crime.'"

"We may justly," said Dr. Barlow, "in the refinement of modern taste,
censure their prolixity, and ridicule their redundancies; we may smile
at their divisions, which are numberless, and at their subdivisions,
which are endless; we may allow that this labor for perspicuity
sometimes produced perplexity. But let us confess they always went to
the bottom of whatever they embarked in. They ransacked the stores of
ancient learning, and the treasures of modern science, not to indulge
their vanity by obtruding their acquirements, but to prove, to adorn,
and to illustrate the doctrine they delivered. How incredible must their
industry have been, when the bare transcript o