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word or two here and there, to complete or elucidate the meauing, which words will be readily distinguished.

"And Hushai said, the counsel that Ahithophel hath given is not good at this time. For, said Hushai, thou knowest thy father and his men, that they are mighty men, and they are (even now) chafed in their minds as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field; and thy father is a man of war, and will not lodge with the people (unguarded-and exposed). Behold he is hid now in some pit, or in some other place (well defended and safe); and it will come to pass, when some of them (who would pursue him) be overthrown at the first, that whosoever heareth it, will say, there is a slaughter among the people that follow Absalom. And (then) he also that is valiant, whose heart is as the heart of a lion shall utterly melt: for all Israel knoweth that thy father is a mighty man, and they that are with him are valiant men. Therefore I counsel, that all Israel, be generally gathered unto thee, from Dan even to Beersheba, as the sand that is by the sea for multitude: and that thou go to battle in thine own person (getting to thyself all the glory of a conqueror): So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found, and we will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground; and of him and of all the men that are with him, there shall not be left so much as one. Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the river, until there be not one small stone found there."

For aught we know, this may be but the brief outline of the speech, which the consummate orator filled up at length for it is easy to see with what power of argument, imagination and passion he might have dwelt on each successive idea. Or these may be all the words he uttered-his looks, tones,

gestures and pauses doing all the rest. But short or long, when his speech was ended, his work was done. The triumph was complete. The effect was overwhelming. "Then Absalom and all the men of Israel said, the counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel." And by way of solution for an issue so wonderful, the sacred historian then adds, that the "Lord had appointed to defeat the good or wise counsel of Ahithophel, to the intent that the Lord might bring evil upon Absalom." We need not pursue the narrative, you know the result: Absalom perished in that battle in which he had hoped to win the glory of a conqueror and David was restored to his throne. But the single point on which all these great events hung, was the speech of Hushai-a speech perhaps only five minutes long!

Now in these days of windy words and long speeches, when all men claim to be eloquent and talk by the hour, when oratory is often a compound of one grain of sense to a hundred weight of verbiage and nonsense, we are scarcely prepared to appreciate the power of so short a speech as this. Its heavy artillery is fired, not by the hour, but by the minute. The whole work of the orator was probably done in far less time than it has taken us to describe it. But never did human eloquence win a more signal and triumphant victory. In force and brevity, it calls to mind the speeches of our own great Franklin, who is said never to have spoken above fifteen minutes on any occasion, and never to have lost a question on which he had spoken. We believe the Congress of our day, have discovered an exact mathematical formula for the expression of oratory-adopting one hour as the maximum and minimum of every speech, on every subject great and small.

This short speech of Hushai reminds us of an interesting

passage in Macaulay's History of England. In his account of the celebrated trial of the Seven Bishops--a trial which had drawn together the highest eloquence and genius and legal learning of the times, the historian speaks of a young lawyer, John Somers, who as yet had been unknown to fame. "Somers rose last. He spoke little more than five minutes, but every word was full of weighty matter; and when he sat down, his reputation as an orator and a constitutional lawyer was established." The side on which he pleaded in that case, also gained the day.

As it regards the great public interests which were at stake on this speech of Hushai, and the personal courage displayed by the orator, we hardly know where to find a parallel. The nearest that now recurs to us, though still differing in many points, is the celebrated speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses of 1765, when he offered the first resolution ever offered in America, against the British Stamp Act, and amidst cries of "Treason! Treason!" from all parts of the house, exclaimed, "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third may profit by their example." Who then could calculate, or who now, the precise amount of impression made by that single burst of eloquence upon the destiny of America and of the human race? In like manner who can tell us what the history of Israel and of the world might have been, if the speech of Hushai had never been delivered in the council of Absalom?

But brief and powerful as was the plea of Somers on th Bishops' trial; brief and effective as were the arguments of Franklin in our halls of legislation; brief and sublime as were the orders of Napoleon or the harangues of Cromwell to his soldiers on the eve of battle; brief, personal and fearless as

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was this warning of Henry in the house of Burgesses-still, when we weigh all the circumstances of brevity, difficulty, danger, embarrassment, power and success, Hushai the Archite must be acknowledged to stand at the head of this kind of eloquence-at once the father and the prince of all those orators, who, by a single speech, have changed the destiny of states and empires.

This closes our survey of the eloquence and orators of the Old Testament. And with this, it will perhaps be best for us, though somewhat abruptly and contrary to the original design, to close the present chapter. The theme is so rich, and it has grown upon our hands, so far beyond any expectation entertained at the beginning of our review, that we cannot now, without crowding too much into a single chapter, present anything like an adequate, corresponding view of the eloquent orators of the New Testament. Here then let us pause, reserving the eloquence of the New Testament for separate and fuller discussion in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ELOQUENT ORATORS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Fxamples of Perverted Eloquence-Herod and Tertullus-Speech of Gamaliel-The Elo quent Apollos-Stephen's Address to the Council-Preaching of John the BaptistPeter as an Orator-Speech of James before the Synod-The Recorder or Town clerk of Ephesus-The Eloquence of Paul-Paul on Mars Hill-Discourse of Lord-Conclusion.

HAVING had occasion to divide our subject into, two parts, let us now proceed to an examination of the eloquent orators the New Testament, in the light of those general character istics and illustrations of eloquence which have all been pointed out. Amongst the multitude of public speaker

figure upon its pages, entitled to wear the starry crown of oratory, it must suffice to sketch only a few of the most prominent and remarkable examples. And for the sake of the contrast which it may furnish, let us begin with the case of those who claimed, but were not entitled to that crown for here, as in almost every thing else, the Bible teaches by contrast, giving us samples of the bad mingled with the good and the noble.

1.-EXAMPLES OF PERVERTED ELOQUENCE-HEROD AND

TERTULLUS.

There are two, expressly mentioned as orators in the New Testament, who have gained the title only by their abuse of the

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