PLAIN PULPIT TALK * THE world, or at least the

English portion of it, is by this time pretty well acquainted with the name and history of the remark-

able man who has just thought fit to publish the little volume before us. Its pages are filled, not exactly with sermons in the ordi-

nary sense of the word, but with what their author not inaptly calls pulpit talk,—talk, where as usual under the circumstances, the speaker has it all his own way, without any chance of a rejoinder; but we must say Mr. Cooper uses this advantage well. We have

here a man who cannot be said not to understand men and their ordinary modes of thought, a charge commonly, sometimes un- justly, brought against ministers in general. It does not always follow that a man knows really leas of the struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil, because his own share in the battle is not fought out in the market-place. It is often the men whose scars will scarcely bear to be touched with " the world's coarse thumb " who can most quickly apprehend the nature and the severity of the wounds to which other men succumb, and know how to touch to heal. But Mr. Cooper, though all his life from anything like " learned leisure" far, has had good training for the path he has chosen. A man deeply moved with the evils he saw everywhere around him, with a strong belief that he, Thomas Cooper, could set the whole social machine right, if only he had sufficient scope allowed him, be tried all the particular political nostrums of his day, was one

of the great leaders of the Chartist movement, and then tried what superficial culture and the philosophy of Strauss would do for the ameliorating of the condition of men. Always honest, always with a direct purpose to benefit the classes for whom and amongst whom he lived, he has ended with the conviction that the Gospel of Christ is the only power of God unto salvation, either for this world or the next ; that truth alone, and no mere political parody of it, can make men really free. How he has acted upon this con- viction we see in the pages before us. Perhaps it will be very difficult for some, even for those who have the truest sympathy with the results at which he arrived and the end he has in view,

to read this volume without prejudice ; but we are more and more persuaded that while, even in common honesty, it should be a teacher's object to attain the fullest view of truth possible to him, and teach up to the highest point of his own knowledge, it is not what we in our shortsightedness esteem the most perfect teaching which does the most good. It often needs the admix- ture of a coarser element to make it tangible to a rough sense of touch. One of the subtlest of thinkers has not inaptly expressed this :—

" Ask, now, a doctor for a remedy:

There's his prescription. Bid him point you out Which of the five or six ingredients saves The sick man. ' Such the efficacity ?

Then why not dare and do things in one dose Simple and pure, all virtue, no alloy Of the idle drop and powder ?' What's his word?

The efficacity, neat, were neutralised : It wants dispersing and retarding,—nay, Is put upon its mettle, plays its part Precisely through such hindrance everywhere, Finds some mysterious give and take i' the case, Some gain by opposition, he foregoes Should he unfetter the medicament.

So with this thought of yours that fain would work Free in the world."

So when we are inclined to quarrel with some of Mr. Cooper's statements, we remember that it is just, perhaps, those points obnoxious to us which help to commend the great truths he teabhes to the consciences of his audience ; but it is time we ex-

amined these pages a little more in detail.

The first thing which strikes us is their eminent practical-

ness. Mr. Cooper had abundant means of studying closely the lives of but too many who made a great deal of out- ward profession and too little of corresponding conduct, and he sets to work accordingly. What is the "horrible pit," out of which men need cry to be delivered? Well, says Mr. Cooper, " there is but one way into it, and that is down Indul- gence Passage." More cultivated minds than those he addressed might find that sentence no bad study. Then, he adds, there are horribly dark corners on the way:down. "There is Vanity Corner, where people do as the world does.' The dwellers in it elbow each other very closely sometimes." And " there is Debt Corner." " Young men," says Mr. Cooper, " if it were the last word I had to address to you in the world, it would be, Don't get into debt. It will make a sneak of you, it will make a slave of you ;"and so on, through a page of vigorous sentences he urges this point, ending with "Keep out of debt, if you dine often on short commons.

* Plats Pulpit Talk. By Thomas Cooper. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Then there are a few masterly passages on the trap-doors lead- ing to that " pit." The style is very sensational, some one will object ; and unquestionably it is, but the preacher is addressing for the most part men whom toil has rendered sleepy; they would not sleep while he was speaking. We incline to think there is a true as well as a false use of sensational power, and if the vividness of some of these portraits startled a good many of his audience, we suspect they started most of all to find he was holding up a mirror. The following passage, addressed to men to whom the temptation to drink to excess is nearly irresistible, is coarsely sensational, but would not convey any exaggeration of the truth to the minds• of those it was intended to impress :—

" The drunkard gets down into the ' miry clay,' deeper and farther still. He gets down where the noxious reptiles breed and fester ; and they bite and sting him ! Look at that wretched dweller in Drunkards' Corner of the horrible pit! The foul reptiles that inhabit it have bitten and string him ; look at his pimpled face and blood shot eyes, and mark his shaky hands! Yet he must have more drink, for he is troubled with the perpetual thirst that habitual drunkenness creates : he mast have more, though his wife and children are starving, in their rags and tatters. Ah! he has ventured toofar into the foul recesses of the pit! See, the folds of that huge serpent of the Boa Constrictor species— Delirium Tremens is its name !—its folds are around him ; and the eyes are fit to bolt out of his head, and he raves and canes, and gnashes his teeth, and foams at the mouth;—and three strong men can scarcely hold him! Young man, dash the glass to the earth, I say—dash it into shivers, and resolve, by God's help, never to touch it again, lest such a case be yours, some day !"

Occasionally, for lack of a little deeper study, Mr. Cooper misses some finer, but not the leas essential point of his subject,—as, for instance, when commenting on David's amazed gratitude at the goodness of God, after he has confessed his sin, he writes :—

" God's revelations to him '(even while be is in agony for his sin), of the Divine goodness and intent to deliver him, amaze his penitent and grateful soul. He cannot express them ! ' Sacrifice and offering Thou didat not desire ; mine ears haat Thou opened'—bored, as it stands in the Hebrew. That is to say, Thou haat made a revelation to me out of the merely natural order : what I could not receive, or know, by mere natural perception, Thou haat revealed to me by Thy Holy Spirit, respecting the way that Thou wilt save me ; and how Thou canst save me, and pardon even such sin as mine, consistently with Thy justice: how Thou canst be just, and the justifier of him that believeth:'- ' burnt offering and sin offering haat Thou not required : Then said

Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do Thy will, 0 my God : yea Thy law is within my heart ! "

—where he seems to miss the true point through not considering the significance of the boring of the ear to the Hebrew ; he makes David occupied with a theological speculation as to the mode of his salvation, instead of uttering a simple acknowledgment of the result to himself of the divine goodness,—' Sacrifice and burnt offering though didat not desire, but thou has made me thy servant for ever (mine ears haat thou bored).'

Mr. Cooper's style is always forcible, and carries with it a con- viction of the thorough honesty of the speaker. One of the most striking of these sermons is on his favourite theme, " Christ the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," which he commences with a graphic description of the probable gossip which took place concerning Saul of Tarsus after his conversion. He then goes on to the consideration of the fact that Truth is power, and that those who have not found Christianity a power in their lives have not found Christ yet :-

"Christian believer ! do you truly feel that this Gospel of Christ is the ' power of God unto your salvation ?' Do you feel it is not weakness, but power? not an ineffectual something that leaves you subject to all your old sins and besetments, but an indwelling spiritual force that enables you to overcome sin ? Do you feel that though you are weak, God makes His strength perfect in your weakness ? Oh! remember that you are to be saved from sin, not in your sin. You are to be 'more than conqueror through Him who hath loved you, and given himself for you.' Anger, pride, malice, revenge, are not to tyrannise over you. Christ's Gospel is the 'power of God unto salvation.' It is worth little to you if it does not save you from the tyranny and slavery of sin."

Tlu3re•is a special interest about the pages wherein the whilom Chartist and still intense Radical commends the power of the Gospel to the making of those of whom he adds, " may God Almighty increase the number among us " who truly deserve

"The grand old name of Gentleman."

More forcibly still he treats the subject of 'renewing strength,' or as he puts it, " changing strength for better strength."

"My brethren, are you changing your strength for better strength? Have you more power over sin than you had a year ago ? Do you love prayer more ? Do you love God's Word more ? Do you love His Church more? How about your temper and habitual disposition? Do you retain the old proneness to revenge so natural to the fallen and unre- newed heart ? When you see your old enemy passing along on the other side of the street, does the old unregenerate feeling arise, There he goes ! It is a long time ago, and I have never been even with him yet, but I will be even witli him, one of these days ! ' Ah I my friend, if the old vindictiveness of the unrenewed mind remains with you yet, you are net changing your strength for better strength." But like too many of the school of thought to which he belongs,. Mr. Cooper sometimes very materially weakens his own power- and usefulness, by drawing a line around 'things lawful,' to the- exclusion of many things lovely and of good report. Against this the honest mind rebels instinctively, or yields to its own injury._ For instance, when speaking of the words, " He hath put a new song in my mouth," &c., Mr. Cooper says :— "0 yes! thou shalt sing new songs : thy old songs will lone, their

charm for thee. don't know why we are not to sing the old songs,'" some lingerer in the pit is saying ; 'some of them are very sweet, and the music too. What harm can there be in ' The Banks and Braes o' Bonny Doon,' and 'Auld lang syne,' and ' Drink to me only with thine eyes,' and a score of other delicious bits of song? How sweet the tunes are I ' Ah! I know all about that fascination. I have felt it as strongly as any of you. But I will ask you who have got out of the pit, and are often tempted to sing the old songs because 'there is no harm in them.' I say I will ask you one question—Can you pray as devoutly, and feel as devoutly, and feel as close and tender union and communion with, God, after singing one of the old songs, as you can when you get on your knees just after singing one of the songs of Zion? You know you cannot," &c.

Now here he has weakened his power, because the mind which

revolts will but too probably forget in its revulsion all the admirable passages which have preceded this exhortation ; and his usefulness is injured, for the man or woman who yields to the statement, and with a weakened conscience finds evil in the purest of old Scotch ballads, will soon find evil in everything, and cease to dread evil in anything. We all know where that teaching un- counteracted ends. It is curious to note the power of rhetoric over uncultivated minds leading depressed and somewhat sunless lives. When Mr. Cooper speaks of the " gorgeousness " of St.

Paul's rhetoric in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we remember who and what the Ephesians were, and find little in the epistle itself to justify the statement. But this passage upon words singularly chastened in their eloquence strikes us as " gorgeous " in the extreme, and yet well calculated to blow into a flame the dull, half-smothered spark of enthusiasm in the hearts he was addressing :—

" Join all ye happy throng in heaven! join the spirits of holy Abel and holy Enoch ; join the spirits of upright Job and perfect Noah ; join the souls of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob ; join the grand souls of Moses and Samuel and Elijah ; join the souls of pardoned David and pardoned Manasseh ; join the soul of Isaiah, the prophet who in his old age was sawn asunder by the wicked king ! Join all ye whose souls under the altar of heaven cry, How long, 0 Lord ! wilt Thou not avenge our blood upon the earth ?' join holy Stephen and Polycarp ; join holy Latimer, and, Ridley, and Hooper, and Rowland Taylor, and Anne Askew ! Join all ye who laboured so stoutly for your Lord, and were favoured to die a natural death ; join brave Wickliffe, and gallant Luther, and stern John Knox, and sweet John Bunyan, and praying: George Fox ; join pious Doddridge and tuneful Watts, join noble George Whitefield, and holy John Fletcher, and exhaustless John Wesley, and dauntless Rowland Hill, and grand though lowly Robert Hall, join all ye saints of God around His throne!—Ye sweetest trebles of the eternal choir, ye million million babes who died without actual sin, join all your notes of praise I—Pall out every atop of the great organ of heaven,, from the deep, deep swell diapason to the lofty flute and cornet!— Gabriel, strike the loftiest note of thy harp of gold!- ' Let the bright seraphim in burning row,

Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow!'

And let the fall gathered host of heaven, angels and men, begin the grand anthem, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing!' And let the bold fugue be struck, 'Blessing, and honour,- and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and auto the Lamb for ever and ever.' And let the eternal ' Amen' peal, and roll, and reverberate through all the arches of heaven 1 but never shall the gathered host, through all eternity, be able fatly to express. the unsearchable riches of Christ !' " But it is not often Mr. Cooper indulges himself or his audience by trying the power of rolling words ; he is generally essentially practical and plain-spoken, asking questions well calculated to arouse thoughtful attention, as when he says, " Take all the regenerate children of God out of the world, and what would become of it ?" — which we take to be a better defence of the divine power of Christ in the world

than half the philosophical reasoning that ever was brought to bear on the subject. Mr. Cooper makes, we think, one very

grave practical mistake, a mistake we certainly should not have expected at his hands. We resent it in the name of the poor, whom he ought to have known better. Here is the statement: An officer of the Church is supposed to say, " You know when one goes to pray by the bedsides of the sick poor, it is always best to give a little substantial relief." To which Mr. Cooper replies, "Aye, and be sure you take care to do so. Depend upon it, the poor will think little of your prayers if you do not give them a

shilling." Apart from the cynicism in that sentence, which is, of course, unconscious and wholly unintentional, the present writer, with a not very narrow experience on the point, holds that to be a distinct libel on the poor. One of the most heartily wel- comed and beloved of the City missionaries in the diocese of London never gave away but eighteenpence in the course of his labours, extending over some years. But with very few drawbacks, we heartily commend this volume. There is real power in it, much freshness and originality in the style, and some depth of spiritual reasoning for which the reader may be thankful. We have not space to quote the passages on temptation from without,' but they are amongst the most valuable in the book. While the sermon on Christ's prayer that his disciples should not be taken out of the world, but kept from evil, with the exception of one passage, upon which we have just commented, is one of the finest, in its special adaptation to the minds of those addressed, we ever read.