MACPHAIL'S EDINBURGH ECCLESIASTICAL JOURNAL. No. IV. MAY 1846. JAY'S COMPLETE WORKS. The Works of William Jay. Collected and revised by himself. -C. A. Bartlett. London. The dissenting clergy in England, and those of all denominations in Scotland, are, with few exceptions, a hard wrought and ill-paid body of men. Their laborious duties therefore leave them too busy, and their slender finances too scantily furnished with books, for the successful cultivation either of general or professional literature. They have no college fellowships, no golden stalls, no richly endowed benefices, to afford them the means of learned and studious leisure; nor bright visions of Episcopal mitres and thrones in the distance, as a stimulus to turn their leisure to account by aiming at professional eminence,-evils great and serious, yet inseparable from the lot of all such ministers as are either dependant for support upon the voluntary contributions of their flocks, or, if endowed, are endowed with such a sparing hand, as to be in too many instances preyed upon by all the depressing cares of "res angustae domi." It therefore redounds much to the credit of these ill-requited men, that so many of them rise superior to the disadvantages of their position; and, extending their usefulness beyond the limited circle of their own flocks, make society at large their debtors, by their instructions through the press. They thus prove, to use an expression of Robert Hall, that Christianity even "without a dowry," has sufficient attractions to command the homage of the wise and good. Among the many distinguished men of our day who are examples of this, William Jay, of Bath, has long held a distinguished place. Of humble parentage, he, fortunately for himself and others, came at an early period of life under the notice of the late pious Cornelius Winter, a disciple of the celebrated John Whitfield. In one of his numerous preaching excursions, Mr. Winter fell in with young Jay. Struck, after repeated interviews, with his piety, his sprightliness, and his pre cocious talents, he took him under his own roof, where he occasionally trained young men for the Christian ministry. He bestowed upon him there such an education both literary and professional, as a selfeducated divine had it in his power to impart; and, according to a practice not uncommon among English Dissenters, sent him occasionally in the course of his studies, to exercise his gifts as a preacher among the villages and rural districts of his neighbourhood. He had scarcely attained his sixteenth year, when his juvenile pulpit ministrations attracted notice. And the fame of his talents spread so rapidly and extensively that, before he reached (we believe) the period of manhood, he was formally admitted pastor of a Dissenting congregation in the city of Bath. Over that congregation he still presides, having resisted all solicitations to remove to a more lucrative and conspicuous sphere; and he now, a hoary patriarch, preaches "the word of salvation" to the grand-children of those who at the commencement of his professional career, invited him to labour among them. In calling the attention of our readers to this uniform edition of his works at present passing through the press, some may think that we are performing a work of supererogation. It is now more than forty years since he presented to the public his first two volumes of sermons. Their several successors, as they made their appearance, obtained a rapid and extensive circulation. And the popularity of the author instead of falling off, having been always steadily upon the increase, his works passed from his own denomination to the general community of Christian readers; so that now there is scarcely a religious library on however humble a scale in England, where some of his volumes are not met with, in company with those of the Leightons, the Baxters, the Watts, and the Doddridges of other days. In Scotland, however, their circulation is still comparatively limited; and we conceive that in attempting to make them more extensively known, we are doing valuable service to all who love a sound, a healthy, and a genial Christianity-intellectual without being cold, and deeply experimental without either eccentricity or morbid feeling. We conceive them more especially useful to young men training for the work of the Christian ministry. While their study is calculated to give precision, accuracy, and expansion, to their theological views, it will, at the same time, help to improve their taste, and to prevent them from falling into a very vicious style of preaching, which is at present too much in favour with young ministers and preachers. The style to which we allude is a showy and imposing but superficial kind of oratory, where the preacher, despising accurate statement, lucid order, and varied information as unworthy of notice, lays out his whole strength in working up one or two (perhaps) common place thoughts by the tumid amplifications of a style which can be called neither prose nor poetryfor it wants the sobriety and the chasteness of the one, while it has all the glitter but none of the inspiration of the other. Preachers of this school, to use a homely illustration, remind us of children amusing themselves with soap bubbles. These, as they project them through their straw tubes in the face of the sun, display to the eye in rich and heautiful tints all the colours of the rainbow. But with all their beauty, what are they? Merely a drop or two of water blown up with wind. The works of Mr. Jay, with the exception of a volume of family prayers, a biographical memoir of his early patron and benefactor, Mr. Winter, and a few essays and sketches on other matters, consist of sermons and lectures, which are distributed into several classes or divisions. In one of these divisions, which occupies the first four volumes of this edition, under the title of "Morning and Evening Exercises for the Closet," the discourses, as their object requires, are short and sketchy. In another, which also consists of four volumes, the discourses are intended for the use of families; and are, therefore, though short, considerably more extended. All the rest are of the length and structure usual in pulpit discourses; and consist partly of sermons preached by the author for special objects and on particular occasions, and partly of discourses addressed to his own congregation, in the ordinary course of professional duty. Viewing them as a whole, they embrace a peculiarly wide and comprehensive range of thought. There is scarcely a point connected with practical Christianity which they do not, more or less, glance at. In the course of their perusal, doctrine, duty, and experience, beautifully blended together in just and symmetrical proportions, meet us in every page-as the staple of every discourse. And whatever we meet with, alike pleases and profits; the conviction, as we advance, ever growing upon us, that we are holding converse with a "master in Israel," a divine, a philosopher, a wise, yet warm-hearted Christian. Such are the contents of these volumes. In inquiring into the circumstances which have procured them such general acceptance, it is creditable to the author that none of them are of a factitious description. Mr. Jay has not been pushed into notice by standing forth as the oracle of a narrow sect or clique. He has lived during a period remarkable for religious novelties both among churchmen and dissenters; and upon none of these has he looked as an indifferent spectator: yet by none of them has he for a moment been diverted from the good old way of sound evangelical preaching. In describing a venerable deceased friend, he has unconsciously drawn his own portrait "The subject of his preaching was invariably the same. Never was there a preacher who more entirely adhered to the determination to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him crucified. He never was higher or lower in his sentiments. Truths were always duly balanced in his mind; and his heart was established with grace. He always blended together doctrine, experience, and practice. He fell into no errors. He embraced no whims. He made no new discoveries in religion. He never supposed any were to be made. He never pretended to speak with new tongues; and was never found neglecting his work to break open the seals, and blow the trumpets, and pour out the vials in the Apocalypse."-(Vol. V. p. 421.) He has lived in an age of fierce religious animosity and strife, when the mutual jealousies and conflicting interests of rival denominations have well nigh made the whole country one extensive field of bitter warfare. Yet superior to the narrow prejudices of a sect, he has cultivated the friendship, and engaged the esteem of the good of all denominations around him- -more attracted by the grand essentials in which he agreed, than repelled by the minute circumstantials in which he differed from them. And as he has not caught the public ear as a leader in the strife of religious parties, or as an advocate of novel opinions in matters of faith, practice, or discipline, as little has he courted their suffrages by conformity to popular and fashionable models. To none of the more celebrated preachers of his day does he bear any resemblance. He is more especially unlike our popular Scottish preachers. It is not his way like Dr. Chalmers, to amaze us by dexterously seizing upon a brilliant idea, and turning it in endless revolution round and round in the kaleidescope of a glowing fancy; or like the late Dr. Thomson, to storm us into surrender by the battering apparatus of sturdy logic, and cutting caustic wit; or like the buffo-the " merry martyr" of the Free Church, to keep our faculties on the tip-toe by theatrical starts, and a rapid succession of glittering, glaring, and grotesque pictures;-or like the whole race of sentimental (or as they loved to be considered par excellence, spiritual) preachers, to win us by the meek and mild persuasion of sweet melodious cadences, of pathetic exhortation, and appeals studded with interjections. He pursues a course much less ambitious and imposing; yet, we conceive, far more arduous and difficult; and, beyond all question, more productive of benefit. For whenever deep impressions are made by unduly working or addressing any one faculty of the mind, its right balance is to the same extent lost, and injury done to its other powers. Jay, like other eminent preachers, has undoubtedly his ruling qualities of mind. His fancy, for instance, never slumbers for a moment, but spreads its bright and brilliant coruscations in every varying hue over every theme that he takes up. But his fancy is happily combined with, and richly ministered to, by every other high mental endowment-by a memory filled to overflowing with images and facts-an acute and capacious intellect strong common sense-deep devotional feeling-and (what he does not rigorously exclude even from his sermons) a lively, playful, and pointed wit. All these qualities, his writings present; and he so successfully fuses them into one harmonious whole, that nothing appears incongruous, nothing offensively protruding; and that in reading his pages, we ever and anon meet with passages, where we are at a loss whether to admire most-their wisdom, or their piety, or their pathos, or their picturesque fancy. One of Mr. Jay's principal peculiarities lies in his style of composition-a style remarkably plain and simple, approaching, indeed, in many instances, to the homeliness of familiar conversation. Hence it is not easily read aloud; and often fails from its brevity and abruptness to satisfy the ear. He is never weak, or tame, or languid; but terse, vigorous, animated, and luminously distinct. It abounds in striking sentences which have all the wisdom of the aphorisms of Bacon, with the epigrammatic point of a South or a Bishop Hall. It |