ir stand on living and eternal truths--who look beyond the crust,
and see the gem within--who see duty urging them on, and become
insensible to aught else. Such men make
martyrs--missionaries--reformers; on a small scale, such are village
Hampdens or Miltons, inglorious and mute. Such men are sure, sooner or
later, to have an earnest crowd of devotees, to exercise a powerful
influence on their age, to be the teachers and founders of a school.

Of this class, undoubtedly, Edward Miall, the editor of the
'Nonconformist,' is one of the latest. Originally a student at Wymondley
College, then 'settled,' as the phrase is, at Ware, then the pastor of a
respectable congregation at Leicester, he was M.P. for John Bright's own
borough of Rochdale, and is, as the _Times_ confesses, a distinguished
Nonconformist. I imagine few of my readers require a description of his
thin and wiry frame. As a platform speaker, or as a mere orator, Miall
is not very effective; he delights his admirers, but he does not do more.
In the pulpit, few men are more fitted to shine. Men enter a place of
worship under different feelings to those with which they run to Exeter
Hall or the London Tavern. In the one case you are in something of a
reverential mood, and you are not disappointed by the want of physical
power. With eternity for his theme, the preacher soon causes you to
forget a feeble voice or a bodily presence not adapted for effect. The
sermonising tone is in keeping with the pulpit, and if every word seem to
have an air of preparation, and to tell of labour, you think that it is
only after mature preparation a man should speak of religious truth to
his fellow-men. Calm self-possession is essential to the sanctuary, and
there you miss not the _abandon_ which elicits the cheers of an excited
audience.

In the pulpit, Miall could always command attention. His manner, if
somewhat artificial and prim, evinced the possession of a mind earnest
and decided. His language was nervous; his views were broad and
catholic. You felt that the man before you was no reproducer of other
men's thoughts, no worn-out echo, no empty sound; that the Christianity
he preached he had found to be good for the intellect and soul of man;
that it was the foundation of all his knowledge; that on that, as a great
fact, he had rested all the hopes and aspirations of his life. Seemingly
void of all animalism--a rock with a gleam of sunlight on it--an
incarnate id