d you will soon be
permeated by the preacher's power. As he unfolds his subject--as he goes
directly to the point--as, with plain and terrible language, he warns men
of sin, and of its fearful results--as he expatiates on the terrors and
splendours of a world to come--as he realises the day when the trumpet
shall sound, when the grave shall give up its spoil, when the dead, small
and great, shall stand before God--you see that he has got at the heart
of his audience--that it hangs upon his lips--that he sways it at his
will--that at his bidding it trembles and despairs--or that it believes
and hopes, and loves and lives. And all this seems done with little
effort, in the boldest and plainest language possible.

A man of one book is always a formidable foe. Mr. Martin is a man of one
book. That one book, as he reads it, proclaims one fact--salvation by
the cross; and to proclaim that fact is the one mission of his life, and
the one message on his lips. Out of that book other men may get more;
out of it Mr. Martin gets but one great and all-absorbing idea. This
being the case, one is not surprised that Mr. Martin is not met with
frequently out of the pulpit, or that what little he has published has
been in the sermon line. He has identified himself with Ragged Schools
and the Early Closing Movement, and the United Kingdom Alliance for the
Suppression of the Liquor Traffic; and has, I believe, written and spoken
in their favour. But the pulpit is his peculiar sphere: there he is
great--there he has no rival near the throne--there he speaks as one
having authority, as an accredited ambassador from God to man. In thus
acting he shows his wisdom; for there he has achieved a success which men
of greater brilliancy, of wider intellectual power, have often sought in
vain. Cowper draws his model preacher:

--'Simple, grave, sincere--
In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain,
And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste,
And natural in gesture; much impress'd
Himself, as conscious of his awful charge,
And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds
May feel it too; affectionate in look,
And tender in address, as well becomes
A messenger of grace to guilty man.'

Mr. Martin might have sat for the portrait.

THE REV. A. J. MORRIS.

The Rev. A. J. Morris is an Independent, _alias_ a Congregational,
minister at Holloway. Of course my fashionable readers don't know where
Holloway is.