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of his theology, it may be doubted whether a preacher who had so little either of matter or of style to please the fancy, to excite the passions, or influence any of the warmer emotions of the soul, let his external accomplishments of action and manner be what they might, would
now succeed, year after year, in drawing together a crowded auditory.
In short, whether the changes in the habits and tastes of the present age, as compared with those of our ancestors a century ago, be in all respects an improvement, we will not undertake to determine; but we cannot help thinking, that a congregation, even among Unitsrians, who are generally supposed to be accustomed to a more subdued and merely argumentative style of preaching than most other denominations, if statedly addressed in the style of
Foster's sermons, would be sensible of a deficiency in what is commonly called
unction.
Though Mr. Foster did not frequently deal in what is styled doctrinal, still less in controversial, preaching, which would probably have been little suited to so miscellaneous an audience as he usually addressed, yet he betrays no desire to keep unpopular notions in the shade; there is no unworthy attempt, by the use of ambiguous phrase to pass off on the unthinking crowd the shadow of pretended orthodoxy, as if it were the substance.
And, in several instances, he does not hesitate to take very decided ground on important controverted points of doctrine.
Of this we have remarkable examples in his celebrated sermons on Mysteries, and on Heresy and Schism.
A mystery, in the scripture sense, he explains to be a fact or doctrine which was revolting to human
