indefatigableness, are the ideas which you wish to express, your language should be correspondently extended. Thus, in Exodus i. 7—" And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was full of them :" all this is not too much to express the prodigious increase of the children of Israel from seventy souls to six hundred thousand men, besides women and children.

Amplification is suited to express great interest and excitement. When you are narrating an interesting story, you naturally dwell on all the minutest details; and when any passion is excited, the mind loves to express itself in redundant copiousness. Thus St. Paul :-"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord'." In this passage you will observe the reiteration of the conjunction, as well as the lengthened enumeration of particulars.

1 Rom. viii. 35-38. See also Ezek. xviii., and Daniel iii.

LETTER XVIII.

ON STYLE-AS DEPENDENT ON THE ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS.

To give rules for the construction of a sentence is the office of grammar rather than of rhetoric. But good grammatical sentences may be deficient in rhetorical requirements. They may be clumsy and inelegant, or deficient in force or clearness.

It is not necessary for the language of a sermon to be as carefully and precisely arranged as that of an essay, or any other composition which is not intended for recitation, because in the former, the tone of voice and manner of delivery will sufficiently mark the sense to correct any deficiency in arrangement. Thus in the sentence, "The Romans understood liberty at least as well as we,”—the emphasis would show that the words "at least" are meant to qualify the sense of what follows them, and not what goes before. Yet even in sermon-writing it is desirable to acquire a

habit of expressing yourself with precision. It would have been just as easy, and much more correct, to have said, "the Romans understood liberty as well at least as we.' I must refer you to elementary works1 for rules respecting the arrangement of a sentence, and shall only make a few remarks which appear useful for our present purpose.

The first essential point in a sentence is unity. This, indeed, is an excellence which ought to run throughout your whole composition. There ought to be an unity of subject in your sermon. Each division ought to embrace one entire branch of the subject; each paragraph one entire argument or topic; and each sentence one idea;—at least one sentence should not contain ideas widely different from each other; the scene and person should not be changed, nor should unconnected actions be described. The following sentence is liable to objection :-" Archbishop Tillotson," says an author of the History of England, "died in this year. He was much beloved both by King William and Queen Mary, who nominated Dr. Tennison, Bishop of Lincoln, to succeed him"." What has the nomination of Dr. Tennison to the vacant office to do with the regard of the King and Queen for Archbishop Tillotson? The principal source of want of unity in a sentence is the unskilful employment of the relative, in such a manner that the scene

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1 See Irving's Elements of English Composition.

is constantly shifted, and the person changed. Careless writers will in this manner link together three or four distinct sentences.

Another cause of the same error is the use of awkward and improper parentheses. You will inevitably spoil the style of your sermon by introducing fresh matter, which occurs to you subsequently to composition, or qualifying your former statements, by the use of parenthesis. It is much better to reconstruct the sentence altogether. When, however, they occur at the first composition it is different, for then they tend to produce strength and naturalness, inasmuch as they represent the first impressions of the mind. This form of sentence may be much more frequently employed in spoken than in written language, because the varied intonation of the voice is sufficient to mark the change. The following are instances" If any man, says our Saviour, (and he makes no limitation to the learned and ingenious, and no exclusion of the uneducated and simple,) if any man will do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God1." And again, in speaking of the miracles of the Gospel-" They might, (I deny the fact, while I admit the possibility,) they might possibly be the work of some spiritual and invisible being subordinate to God." In these instances the parenthesis appears to arise, as doubtless was the case, from vivacity of thought, and consequently, instead of clogging or

1 John vii. 17.

impeding the sense, it gives additional spirit and

energy.

We will now consider briefly the effect of different ways of arranging words in a sentence.

Some writers have lamented the disuse of the order of arrangement practised by the Greeks and Romans, termed the inverted or transpositive order; others greatly prefer the modern fashion, which they are pleased to call the natural order. Why one mode should be thought more natural than another is not very clear, except on the principle that those things are natural to which we are accustomed, and the reverse. A French writer declared that the English dinners were served up without any regard to order, because they were not in the order to which he was used. The more just view of the case seems, however, to be, that the natural order is to put the principal idea in that situation where it shall be most prominent, and that is generally at the beginning. In English, most commonly, the subject is placed first. But when immediate attention is required, and sudden change of action signified, then it is more natural to place the verb first, or the object. "There appeared unto them Moses and Elias1." parition is the principal circumstance : Euryalus says,

Here the ap

so when

"Me, me, (adsum qui feci) in me convertite ferrum 2,"

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