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[218] the important office of a Christian minister, will be less in danger of pursuing his work, as some may perhaps have done, merely as a business of scholarship and literary research; while, earnestly desirous to bring all the aids of learning and critical acuteness which he can command to illustrate its beauties, enforce its arguments, trace its allusions, and explain its occasional obscurities, he will ever remember that the main end and purpose of his labour in commenting on the word of God, is to promote its practical efficacy in improving the hearts and lives of those to whom it is addressed. On the other hand, in common with many others who have enjoyed similar advantages, Dr. Benson was, happily, under no temptation to abandon the character of a critic and theologian in his preparation for the pulpit; to keep back from his people the result of his inquiries in the closet, or to veil them, as some have done, in obscure and ambiguous language, in order to maintain a delusive reputation for what is called orthodoxy. As he had laid himself under no obligations to adhere through life to a certain specified formula of man's construction, so his hearers were ready to grant him the liberty which they used themselves, and to receive with candour his unreserved communications of what appeared to him to be the truth as it is in Jesus.

Of Dr. Benson's manner as a preacher, his biographers have left us no account. The character of his style in his other compositions, correct and perspicuous, but perfectly plain, and devoid of studied ornament or appeals to the passions, leads us to conclude that he did not aim at the reputation of a popular preacher; and his congregation

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