nd kindled their devotions. He plunged fearlessly into
every subject which had a bearing on religious life. While he stood
before them clad in the robes of priestly office, holding in his hands
the consecrated elements which told of their redemption, and offering up
to God before the altar prayers in their behalf, he also ascended the
pulpit to speak of life and death in all their sublime relations. "There
was nothing touching," says Talfourd, "in the instability of fortune, in
the fragility of loveliness, in the mutability of mortal friendship, or
the decay of systems, nor in the fall of States and empires, which he
did not present, to give humiliating ideas of worldly grandeur. Nor was
there anything heroic in sacrifice, or grand in conflict, or sublime in
danger,--nothing in the loftiness of the soul's aspirations, nothing of
the glorious promises of everlasting life,--which he did not dwell upon
to stimulate the transported crowds who hung upon his lips. It was his
duty and his privilege," continues this eloquent and Christian lawyer,
"to dwell on the older history of the world, on the beautiful
simplicities of patriarchal life, on the stern and marvellous story of
the Hebrews, on the glorious visions of the prophets, on the songs of
the inspired melodists, on the countless beauties of the Scriptures, on
the character and teachings and mission of the Saviour. It was his to
trace the Spirit of the boundless and the eternal, faintly breathing in
every part of the mystic circle of superstition,--unquenched even amidst
the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and in the cold and beautiful
shapes of Grecian mould."

How different this eloquence from that of the expiring nations! Their
eloquence is sad, sounding like the tocsin of departed glories,
protesting earnestly--but without effect--against those corruptions
which it was too late to heal. How touching the eloquence of
Demosthenes, pointing out the dangers of the State, and appealing to
liberty, when liberty had fled. In vain his impassioned appeals to men
insensible to elevated sentiments. He sang the death-song of departed
greatness without the possibility of a new creation. He spoke to
audiences cultivated indeed, but divided, enervated, embittered,
infatuated, incapable of self-sacrifice, among whom liberty was a mere
tradition and patriotism a dream; and he spoke in vain. Nor could
Cicero--still more accomplished, if not so impassioned--kindle among the
degen