"To trust religiously, to hope humbly, to desire nobly, to think rationally, to will resolutely, to work earnestly—may this be mine !" We are ardent admirers of many of Dr. Bushnell's works. We have read lately his volume entitled "Christian Culture," a book of the utmost profundity, truth, and beauty. It is far the ablest book on the subject that we ever read—the godly upbringing of children. Hear what he says of a true Christian home, and take note of the asyndeton: "What scene of family dignity is more to be admired? The highest splendors of wealth and show have but a feeble glowworm look in the comparison-a pale, faint glimmer of light, a phosphorescent halo, enveloping what is only a worm. Even the poor laboring man, thanking God at his table for the food he earned by the toil of yesterday; singing still each morning in his family hymn of the glorious rest at hand; moving on thitherward with his children by single day's journeys of prayer and praise; teaching them, even as the eagles do their young, to spread their wings with him and rise—this man, I say, is the prince of God in his house; and the poor garb in which he kneels outshines the robes of palaces. Religion leads in the day as the dawn leads in the morning. It blends a heavenly gratitude with the joys of the table; it breathes a cheerful sense of God into all the works and tempers of the house; it softens the pillow for rest when the day is done. Home and religion are sacred words-names both of love and reverence: home, because it is the seat of religion; religion, because it is the sacred element of home." CHAPTER IV. FIGURES OF SYNTAX. PART SECOND. Polysyndeton.-Zeugma.-Syllepsis.-Paradiastole.-Pleonasm.-Me-ism.- Hypallage. - Hysteron-proteron, or Putting the Cart before the Horse. XXI. Polysyndeton is our next figure, or Superfluity of Ands. All birds have two wings, so has the mind figures in contrasted pairs. Asyndeton assures us of polysyndeton-a proof and illustration, running through our whole wide theme, that we are studying the habits of a creature that soars. See Luke vii., 38; x., 27; xii., 46, 58; xv., 22, 23. Gen. viii., 22. In the following beautiful tradition about our Master you find a superfluity of "ands:" "Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and sent his disciples on to prepare a frugal supper; while he himself, intent on doing good, walked weary through the streets into the market-place. "And he saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together, looking at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter around its neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the mire; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man. "And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence. "Faugh!' said one, stopping his nose, 'it pollutes the air.' 'How long,' said another, 'shall this foul beast offend our sight?' 'Look at his torn hide,' said a third; 'one could not cut even a shoe-tie out of it.' 'And his ears,' said a fourth, 'all draggled and bleeding.' 'No doubt,' cried a fifth, he hath been hanged for thieving.' "And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, he said: 'Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth.' "And the people turned toward him with amazement, and said among themselves, 'Who is this? This must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only he could find something to pity and praise even in a dead dog.' And, being ashamed, they bowed their heads before him, and went each on his way. Be ours that gentle judging; that quickness, that tendency to detect some good in even the vilest; and immeasurable capabilities. Turn we our severity on ourselves, our gentleness on others." By keeping the mind tarrying on each circumstance; by the frequent recurrence of the particle of addition "and," we have left on us the feeling that the circumstances must indeed be numerous. To Nathaniel Lee let us look for an example, quoting from one of the best of his eleven tragedies. A master of genuine passion and tenderness, he sometimes degenerates into bombast. Death is his theme. His tragedy of Lucius Junius Brutus is open before us: "Groans, and convulsions, and discolor'd faces; Friends weeping round us; plumes and obsequies; This gifted man had to be kept in an asylum for the insane from 1684 to 1688; and his death was occasioned by injuries received in a drunken night-frolic. Mark how shallow his sentiment in the passage just quoted. Not death's circumstantials, but death's essence-the solemn close of our probation; the entrance on dawn or midnight; the reaping as we know we must have sowed; these be what make death sublime and dread. How much deeper philosophy, how much fitter for even poesy, Paul's plain yet profound statement— "The sting of death is sin." What digs deepest, strikes out the deepest founts for the Muses to drink of. Many instances of the repetition of "ands" occur in Demosthenes-matchless model of orators. One of our main objects is to make you familiar with him—much spoken of, little read, never worthily translated. The passages we shall quote from him, translated by us for this work, will, we hope, deepen in your minds the conviction that he merits all his fame as one of God's greatest miracles of eloquence; in whom, too, eloquence is ever simple, natural, life-like, thoroughly unaffected; and a great lesson for all future orators, especially in the political arena, where the eloquence is sustained in its power by noble virtues breathing through it; such as forgetfulness of himself, disinterested enthusiasm for his country, for independence, for the master axioms that are the food and soul of private and public worth-axioms announced by him, ever and anon, in words few but all of fire; and where, with the undaunted boldness of a man willing to die at any hour a martyr for truth, liberty, and duty, he denounces, in every form of sarcasm, detestation, and profound sorrow, the ruling vices of that great Athenian people whom he sought to convince and rescue, and in whose hand his life was. He as bold an orator as Elijah a prophet. In the First against Philip, near the close, we meet this instance of many "ands:" "These things let us thoroughly know-that the man is our enemy, and has spoiled us of our dominions, and for a length of time has insulted us, and that all things whatever which at any time we hoped others would do for us are found against us; and that all the things which remain must be found in our own very selves; and that if we will not to fight him there, here it is likely we may be forced to fight him." This is a fair sample of the kind of words Demosthenes uses. You will find no dandyish poetical or semi-poetical phraseology in him; nor one speck of self-conceit as tainted the eloquence of Cicero; nor a single instance of a passage foisted in for the mere sake of ornament. He uses not at all either fuss or feathers. He puts an immense force into the plainest, shortest words; as in the above passage into "there" and "here." Intent he on carrying his point; not on fine ornaments, of which he has not one. Yet the ancients said of him truly that in every sentence of his there is some figure; for burning earnestness rushes into figures by the hundred. We can not turn from Demosthenes without taking this opportunity of urging on you two lessons—to us they seem great-gathered from a prolonged study of this wondrous man. We lay before you the concluding sentence of that mighty oration, "On the Crown:" "O all ye gods, I pray to you all in one prayer, that not one of you may favor these feelings and desires so hostile to Athens; but O do ye infuse-this is my most earnest prayer-infuse even into these traitors to their country a better mind and better sentiments; yet, if it be certain that they are incorrigible, then O pursue them, man by man of them, with ruin and destruction, by sea and by land; and on the rest of us O do ye bestow the speediest possible deliverance from these overhanging terrors, and grant us a national salvation that can not be shaken." First, this reflection forces itself on us-we by no means go in search of it: Many can not endure the imprecatory -they love to call them the cursing-prayers in the Psalms of David; in which, though they are for the most part predictions, the Psalmist perhaps once or twice invokes a curse on sworn oppressors and shedders of blood. Yet all the best educated minds for centuries have lauded with a just enthusiasm this oration about the Crown; and not least the close of it. Justice is done to the won |