capital as his professional skill, and without it he is but half equipped for his work. The greatest trusts in the world are held by lawyers, and it is to the credit of the profession, that there are a larger proportion of them capable of exercising important trusts with absolute integrity, than in any other class of business or professional men. This comes in large part from their training and discipline, a part of which is to define rights with nice discrimination and absolute impartiality.

The lawyer must be devoted to his profession. The law has been called "a jealous mistress," and it requires the absorption of all the forces of mind and body, and a steady purpose, to succeed.

Lord Erskine, early in his career, wrote these words to a friend who sought to persuade him to seek honors in parliament rather than in the law: "Keep, then, the path," he says. “That means the path which leads to where one is going. Keep the path, i. e., be steady in your exertions, read your briefs thoroughly, let your arguments be learned and your speech to juries be animated. There is no advantage in keeping the path, except it be the right one. I am in the path, and mean to keep it. To a grave lawyer like me Westminster Hall is the only path to greatness."

Another distinguishing trait of the legal profession has been their fairness and love of justice.

Samuel J. Tilden said of O'Connor, the distinguished advocate, "that during his fifty years' practice, he

was never known to misstate facts or present unsound propositions of law," and in saying that, he pronounced an encomium on his distinguished friend more effective than could be contained in volumes of panegyrics.

A former client of Abraham Lincoln said no one could consult him on professional business without being impressed with his absolute honesty and love of the right, and especially was this noticeable in his conscientious scruples in charging moderate fees. These expressions and characteristics of some of the greatest names in jurisprudence, though few, are yet suggestive, and show in a measure some of the elements of their But the basis of the fame of every great lawyer is character,-without that he may be brilliant and learned, but he will fall short of a high place in his profession.

success.

THE PREACHER.

EV. JOSEPH PARKER, of London, one of the most original preachers of this age, has made this criticism: "Preaching to-day

is often a sublime flight in the air, in the exciting progress of which the contestants strike at nothing, and hit it with magnificent precision."

Notwithstanding this scathing remark, it may be truthfully said, that preachers were never abreast of the times more than at the present day. Never has there been more careful and systematic preparation for the sacred office than in these modern days. Dr. William M. Taylor, of New York, himself one of the ablest divines of this generation, has given as the result of his experience and observation, these invaluable hints among others, on the preparation of the preacher.

First. The study of the works of standard authors, which should include Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon, Macaulay, Motley, Locke, Reid, Hamilton, Mill, Butler, Edwards and Chalmers.

Second. The free and constant use of the pen in original composition.

Third. The limited use of adjectives.

Fourth. The cultivation of elocution, and an earnest delivery.

Fifth. The use of common sense, and a perception of the fitness of things; and sums up his suggestions in these words:

"Finally, let all your abilities, natural and acquired, be vitalized by your devotion to the Master. The question is not, "Lovest thou the work?" but, "Lovest thou me ?" Such love will consecrate the whole man, and make him all magnetic. One of the most effective features in preaching is simplicity."

Arthur Helps tells a story of an illiterate soldier at the chapel of Lord Morpeth's castle in Ireland. Whenever Archbishop Whately came to preach, it was observed that this rough private was always in his place, mouth open, as if in sympathy with his ears. Some of the gentlemen playfully took him to task for it, supposing it was due to the usual vulgar admiration of a celebrity. But the man had a better reason, and was able to give it. He said, "That isn't it at all. The Archbishop is easy to understand. There are no fine words in him. A fellow like me, now, can follow along and take every bit of it in."

An old church member made this remark to his pastor: "I dinna ken a part of your sermon yesterday. You said the Apostle used the figure of circumlocution, and I dinna ken what it means." "Is that all," said the minister. "It's very plain. The figure of circumlocution is merely a periphrastic mode of diction." "Oh, is that all!

understand that."

What a puir fool I was not to

The following description by Dr. Hanna, of the manner and style of Dr. Guthrie, the stalwart and eloquent Scotch preacher, is more suggestive than any set rules. He says: "No discourses ever delivered from the pulpit had more the appearance of extempore addresses. None were ever more carefully thought over, more completely written out beforehand, or more accurately committed to memory. If ever there was any one who might have trusted to the spur of the moment for the words to be employed, it was he. No readier speaker ever stepped upon a platform; but such was his deep sense of the sacredness of the pulpit, and the importance of weighing well every word that should proceed from it, that he never trusted to a passing impulse to mold even a single phrase. Yet in the manuscript there were often phrases, sentences, illustrations, that one on hearing them could scarcely believe to have been other than the suggestion of the moment, linking themselves, as apparently they did, with something that was then immediately before the speaker's eye. The explanation of this lay in the power (possessed in any considerable degree by but few, possessed by him in perfect measure) of writing as if a large audience were around him; writing as if speaking; realizing the presence of a crowd before him, and having that presence as a continual stimulus to thought and a constant molder of expression. The difference, in fact, that there almost invariably is between written and spoken address, was by his vivid imagina