THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 3 z 7 



men*y and rollicking as ever, proving that to animals and men content- 

 ment is a continual feast. 



She is not without imitation, for she has appeared to listen to, and 

 to aim to imitate, the canary's song. Of course, imitations are seldom 

 to be admired, and perhaps, even in music, mimicry may be set down 

 as in the main base. I have known her to be excited into song by the 

 playing of the piano, especially if the playing was in the natural key. 

 There are many things that might be said, but the proverb on brevity 

 is sno-o-estive ; so we will add only one thing more, and we regret that 

 this last say is not in keeping with the Christian moral of speaking the 

 last word kindly. Alas for little Hespie ! She repels every gentle ap- 

 proach, even the hands that lovingly minister to her comforts ; and, 

 notwithstanding her great accomplishments, she is a capricious and 

 unamiable little vixen. 







THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 



Bt Rev. H. W. BEECHEE. 



MY impression is, that preachers are quite as well acquainted with 

 human nature as the average of well-informed citizens, but far 

 less than lawyers, or merchants, or teachers, or, especially, politicians. 

 I mean that, taking our American clergy generally, in their practical 

 relations with society, while on the one hand they have shown them- 

 selves to be shrewd, discreet, and sagacious : and if their separate 

 functions had lain in the conduct of affairs, socially, there would be 

 but little to be criticised on the whole yet, as preachers, they stand 

 off toward the bottom of the list among students of human nature. 



The school of the future (if I am a prophet, and I am, of course, 

 satisfied in my own mind that I am !) is what may be called a Life 

 School, with a style of preaching that is to proceed, not so much upon 

 the theory of the sanctity of the Church and its ordinances, or upon 

 a preexisting system of truth which is in the Church somewhere or 

 somehow, as upon the necessity for all teachers, first, to study the 

 strengths and the weaknesses of human nature minutely ; and then to 

 make use of such portions of the truth as are required by the special 

 needs of man, and for the development of the spiritual side of human 

 nature over the animal or lower side the preparation of man in his 

 higher nature for a nobler existence hereafter. It is a life-school in 

 this respect, that it deals not with the facts of the past, except in so 

 far as they can be made food for the present and factors of the life 

 that now is ; but rather studies to understand men, and to deal with 

 them face to face and heart to heart yea, even to mould them as an 

 artist moulds his clay or carves his statue. And, in regard to such a 



