to the people in a living way, on living themes, and preach exceedingly well sometimes. On the other hand, the most popular lecturers are clergymen. And those who are not make themselves a sort of lay preachers, and gain favor as well as influence with the people by giving an earnest moral tone to their addresses. One of them, a littérateur, actually rebuked a preacher, the other day, for abusing the profession of popular lecturer, by making it serve the people's amusement instead of their instruction or elevation. Mr. Anthony Trollope says, that the American lecturer always chooses politics for his theme. What is this but saying, that he always chooses ethics? and what is this, again, but saying that he is a preacher? The power of the pulpit is confessed once more in the attacks that are made on it, in the avowed jealousy of its influence in times of popular excitement, in the attempts to suppress it which are inaugurated by the demagogue, and persisted in by the corrupt portion of the press. Tyrants dread the pulpit; the upholders of vicious customs dread the pulpit; the advocates of wicked laws dread the pulpit; the supporters of inhuman institutions dread the pulpit; the friends of unhallowed power dread the pulpit. Why, if to them the pulpit be not dreadful? There is a certain class of political newspapers, which are unceasing in their assaults on the liberal pulpit. Why, unless they fear the power of the pulpit? John Wesley one day in the street met a man who was cursing terribly. He stopped to remonstrate with him, and finally brought the blasphemer to his senses. On parting, after walking together some little way, the man shook the preacher's hand, and said, "I am coming to hear you preach some time; in fact, I should have been before, but I was afraid you would say something about cock-fighting." That was a confession of the power of preaching. As soon as the preacher touches the subject of intemperance, there is commotion among the gin-shops, and the whiskey interest gathers its whole strength to eject the man from his pulpit, a pretty fair indication that the preacher is a force in society. As soon as the preacher touches the subject of slavery, there is uproar among the politicians, and the gigan - tic cotton interest collects all its energy to suppress a single bold speaker, a tolerably trustworthy sign that the preacher is not an insignificant functionary in the community. Slavedom, North and South, trembled at the soft voice of Channing. Conservative men, with all the prestige of wealth, fashion, position, respectability, social influence, on their side, thought the sweet and noble Follen too dangerous a man to be countenanced or listened to. No man in America was more feared and hated, more trusted and loved, than Theodore Parker. He was only a preacher. It is a familiar saying, one forever in our ears, if we have heard it once, we have heard it a hundred times, that the preaching of the liberal clergy has been largely instrumental in bringing on the civil war which is shaking the land from end to end; that if the pulpit had only been silent, the country would be at peace. Equally familiar, on the other side, is the assertion, that, if the Northern pulpit alone had been faithful to its convictions, slavery, the cause of all our woes, would long since have been quietly abolished. Tremendous admissions, both, that the power of the pulpit is exceedingly great, even in the America of this century; tremendous admissions that this power has not departed, and is not departing, that the preacher loses none of his authority by stepping down from his lofty isolation, and addressing immediately the human conscience in the name of the Deity who inspires human nature. There are those who, in the modern passion for preaching, see a bad augury for worship. It indicates to them a decline in spiritual fervor, a decay in the old solemn reverence for institutions, a waning of the steady inner light, a hushing of the still small voice in the soul. It is a sign that religion is becoming outward and superficial; that it is feeding on excitement, is giving itself over to the passion for unrest; so that, by and by, instead of the devout congregations of prayerful men and women, we shall have only crowds of people rushing hither and thither with itching ears, curious to hear some new thing. For ourselves, we do not share this apprehension. To us the supremacy of the preacher above the priest is an omen that religious feeling is becoming more spiritual, because more intelligent; that worship is becoming more genuine, because more natural; that reverence is becoming firmer and deeper, because more rational. The passage from the phase of emotion to that of thought, from the phase of dumb, unconscious devotion to earnest aspiration, from inconsiderate assent to open-eyed questioning, and even to doubt that expects an answer, is not a passage from good to evil, from safety to peril, which any pious soul has reason to repel. When truths are valued above ceremonies, and the appreciation of Divine laws in matter, mind, and spirit supersedes allegiance to ritual, creed, and church, every truly pious soul believing in the living God will rejoice. For the rest, we hear no complaint that the great preaching leaves any real want of the soul unsatisfied. No priest more completely fulfils the priestly offices than the prophet does. When, in favored hours, the human voice rolls out from the deeps, rich with the music of humanity, bearing on its tremulous tides the heart's burdens of want and desire, the yearning, the aspiration, the sorrow, the faith, the charity of the soul, the people are satisfied; they ask no more; they have eaten the consecrated elements in full communion; they have partaken of the sacramental bread and wine; they have repeated the Credo; they have responded to the litany; they have joined in Venite and Te Deum in a temple grander than St. Peter's at Rome; they have heard the choral chants tumble and soar overhead among the vast arches and around the tall pillars; they have felt the very ground of existence tremble beneath them, as the great organ blew its thundering bass. The prophet, at such times, is the religion, and the sermon is the church. The prophet disappears, the religion is empty. The sermon is hushed, and the church is a pile of stone and mortar. 22 ART. VIII. —A MONTH OF VICTORY, AND ITS RESULTS. 1. Papers of the Loyal Publication Society. 2. Letter of HON. WILLIAM WHITING to the Union League of Philadelphia. 3. Emancipation in Missouri. A Sermon by REV. W. G. ELIOT, D. D. St. Louis: McKee and Fishback. 4. Preliminary Report of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission to the Secretary of War. A FEW words of retrospect will introduce what we have to say respecting the present aspect of certain points in our public policy. The month of July, 1863, has proved memorable beyond every other of the memorable thirty since the outbreak of the Rebellion. At its opening, although there was nothing in the situation at large to suggest any despair of the republic, in the mind of the wise and thoughtful, yet there was enough to justify the outside observer in thinking that our government had attempted a task beyond its strength. More than two years of fighting had left the military force of the Rebellion still apparently unbroken. Six months had passed since the President's proclamation of freedom, yet with very little of the visible fruit that was looked for from that marked and bold change in the policy of the war. The shadow of Fredericksburg had fallen far over the dark days of winter. The desperate struggle of Murfreesboro had only won a fresh position, to be held warily, at some disadvantage, and with not even any present prospect of pushing the line of victory any farther. Slowly and reluctantly we had been forced to believe that the "campaign of the wilderness" in May, so boldly and brilliantly begun in the advance on Chancellorsville, had ended in disaster and repulse. The astonishing series of movements in the Southwest, equally hardy, swift, and perfectly successful, under Generals Banks and Grant, had terminated alike in the weary, exhausting, and uncertain task of besieging the strongest fortresses of the Mississippi,— a six weeks' siege, whose sad monotony was broken only by the bloody and cruel incidents of unsuccessful assault. Ꭺ series of boastful threats that the seat of war was to be transferred, and its horrors were to be felt, and the terms of peace extorted, in the cities of the North, had culminated in an invasion, so bold, so skilful and resolute, so swift in its movement and so confident in its strength, that it seemed to put the Free States at the mercy of its victorious host; and foreign observers did not disguise their cheerful expectation that the next mail would bring them news of the great republic prostrate, and the Confederacy no longer supplicating, but demanding, from its seat of power in Washington, name and recognition among the nations of the earth. We cannot go back to review the course of events which in one week reversed that prospect, and showed the same Confederacy baffled at every point, defeated, driven back, and all but crushed. It is literally true, that the first eight days of July diminished its actual fighting force by at least eighty thousand men, besides throwing all the advantage of position, and all the prestige of victory, upon the side of the government and the Union. The three days' desperate struggle at Gettysburg beat back the Confederate force at the highest flood-tide of its invasion: since then, we have seen only the baffled, slow, and sullen movement of its refluent wave. The great fortress of Vicksburg, the "Gibraltar of the West," deemed impregnable to all assault by land or water, surrendered on the 4th to the force which had been brought in so splendid and masterly a way to its investment. Four days later, the surrender of Port Hudson restored to the United States the definite and unchallenged control of the vast valley and watercourses of the West, and hopelessly sundered the Confederacy at its central and most vital part. Two sharp struggles, on the east and west bank of the great river, — at Donaldsonville and Helena, whose importance was only overshadowed by the magnitude of those grand achievements, set the final seal to their success; while the noble army that for six months had been pressing steadily towards the highlands of Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia suddenly, and without any conflict of arms, found itself master of sixty miles' breadth of yielded territory, with its magnificent harvests and its more than half-loyal population. The futile and |