virtue inquired into. So it were much more pleasant, for a minister to have a model which he might copy without any tedious exercise of discretion, than to be obliged to try his reason and his piety in ascertaining where and how to copy. But the Head of the church has not singled out the sacred office for a sinecure to its occupant, nor has he designed that preachers should be exempt from the probation involved in determining how to discharge duty. They are on trial, and therefore things are not all made ready at their hands. They need the moral discipline, which they find in deciding how to rightly divide the word; in their decisions they manifest their pride or humility, reverence for God or fear of man; and for these decisions they are accountable to Him, who hath given them talents, not to be hid in a napkin, but to be used. It is indeed true, that they may be betrayed by this latitude of manner into an improper style; so are they betrayed by the generalness of moral precepts into improper conduct. Here is the trial of spirits. A faithfully improved mind, an humble heart, will in either case lead them to the right; indolence or irreligion will lead them to the wrong. It is a deeply solemn truth, that the right mode of preaching "is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against; that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

Fourth, the good sense of preachers has frequently led them to sacrifice the details to the main principles of scriptural rhetoric. As they have not thought themselves required to write in the Hellenistic Greek language, because the apostles did, or to preach in the open air, or in a sitting posture, because we have reason to believe that the apostles often did; or to appear with a "bodily presence weak and speech contemptible," because Paul modestly intimates that his appearance was so regarded by the Corinthians; or to fall prostrate on the face, beat the breast, and rend the garments, because the prophets accompanied their words with such corporeal excitements; as in fine they have not often felt obliged to imitate the external mode, so they have not always felt obliged to imitate the intellectual mode of the inspired orators, in all its details. It is indeed often said and truly, that we should give to every doctrine the same prominence and proportion, which it has in the sacred volume; yet in the application of this general truth, the prudence of men has been properly exercised. No modern preacher spends so great a portion of his time as Paul spent, in proving the ineffi

cacy of the Jewish ritual, or the impropriety of converting the Lord's supper into a sensual feast, or the folly of expecting the immediate dissolution of the world. The apostles preached in times of persecution and peril, and to new converts who needed comfort and solace. Their preaching, therefore, was more consolatory in its general strain, than the preaching of the present day ordinarily is, or should be. In the full tide of ecclesiastical prosperity, men need to be cautioned more than consoled, and so great a proportion of soothing address as was required of the apostles would be less relevant to our state, than a greater proportion of testing and trying address than was required of them. When religion is popular, there is more danger of self-deception; when religion is unpopular there is more danger of open apostasy; the apostles opposed the latter danger more prominently than the former; and, in imitation of their spirit, we oppose the former danger more prominently than the latter. As God teaches by his providences and by the pulpit-ministrations of his servants, it is but reasonable that the pulpit should administer the less comfort where the providences of God are all comforting; and should urge less to self-examination, where the trying providences of God are themselves a refiner's cupel.— The doctrine of the Trinity is taught in the Bible with great freshness and beauty, "here a little and there a little," each part of the doctrine seeming new, and the whole of it involving a variety that charms, and breathing forth a moral spirit, that is itself an argument. But we, who do not wear the loosely flowing robes of the orientals, may preach on the Trinity in a style more compact, scientific, and even scholastic. We may, do, sometimes must; and when it is objected that the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, we only reply that the Bible was not written in a scholastic age, and we are glad it was not.

Infidels have made strenuous objections to the phraseology of the Bible in its descriptions of Deity, and to the sentiment, as well as the style, of many scriptural addresses to Jehovah. We justify all that the sacred writers have said to and concerning the Deity. It is as it should have been. When we accuse uneducated Christians, now living, of irreverence in their prayers, we often do them injustice; for what would be irreverent in us, is often reverent in them. So when infidels condemn the invocations of ancient saints, they forget entirely that the poetic character, the oriental associations, the whole attitude of those saints required of them certain peculiarities, which we might imitate were we in their stead.

But because we might in other circumstancs, it does not follow that, in our present circumstances, we must offer prayer in the style of Ps. 69: 21-28. 109: 6—20. 137: 8, 9; or that we must use such metaphors, in reference to God, as are found in Ps. 44: 23. Hosea 11: 10, and numerous other passages, which are, in a good but peculiar sense of the term, inimitable.*

There is an infidel tract, of which it were hard to say whether sophistry or blasphemy were its chief characteristic, which contains several prayers expressed in the language of Scripture, and feigned to be offered by an occidental and an uninspired man. But this is slander against the Bible; for such prayers have a very different meaning with us, from what they had with the ancient prophets. This is slander against modern Christians; for their good sense has taught them in these cases, to deviate from the style, so far as their condition differs from the condition of inspired men.

It is not because modern preachers are irreverent, that they do not construct their sermons on the plan of the Canticles, nor introduce certain terms which the apostles introduced with perfect propriety, nor read to their congregations certain passages, which were wisely adapted by prophets to tastes very different from our own. The most strenuous advocate of minute conformity to the scriptural model, endeavors, if he be a reasonable man, to teach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and therefore avoids in fact, whatever he do in theory, certain quotations from the Bible, which were expressed in language exactly right for ancient Asia, but suggesting now something more than the whole moral truth. Reasonable men remember, that the Bible was not written in the English language. But all are not reasonable men; and I therefore remark in the last place,

Fifthly, that when preachers have attempted an undeviating conformity to the details of scriptural rhetoric, they have often done injury. I have heard a minister pray," if it be for thy glory sink the wicked still lower in hell," and he justified himself by saying that David offered a prayer somewhat similar; but forthwith there went abroad a suspicion that the minister was deranged, and he certainly was in this prayer. I have heard a man preach on the subject of moral reform, in such a style that he incurred very strong suspicions of being himself in need of moral reforma

* See Lowth's Lectures on Heb. Poetry, Stowe's Edition, p. 62. VOL. X. No. 28.

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tion; yet he justified himself by saying, that all his expressions were used by inspired men, who wrote however before the expressions became objectionable, as well as before the English language came into use. Evil, nothing but evil is the result of such preaching. Our moral reformers must walk on sandals; and wash their feet whenever they enter a house; and cleanse their hands, if nothing else, whenever they eat; salute all their friends with kisses; must become orientals externally, before they venture to become such in their free reprimands of an almost nameless vice. By their literal quotations from the Bible, they often do injustice to its spirit, and by their original descriptions, so exuberant, transcending even the liberty of the East, they do gross injustice not only to the spirit, but also to the letter of the pure word. On the other hand, when men denounce as unscriptural all agencies established for resisting a particular vice, and say that the modern pulpit should be, like the apostolic, exclusively devoted to preaching by a Gospel minister, and not at all to lecturing by an agent, to preaching Christ and not at all to the distinct exposure of an overt evil, as licentiousness, or slavery, or Sabbath-breaking, or intemperance, then we may admit our deviation from apostolic example, without acknowledging an error either in the apostles or in ourselves; and before we abandon any system of agencies, we demand the proof that the mode pursued by twelve inspired missionaries, in the first century, is to be the specific mode for twelve thousand uninspired ministers, in the nineteenth century; and this proof can only be given by showing, that the modern system of beneficence is no more adapted to do good now, than it was eighteen hundred years ago. As soon as this is shown, and perhaps in some instances it may be, the ill-adapted system must be abandoned.

There has been and is a painful dispute in the church, concerning the scriptural authority for certain "new measures." It is sometimes said that they have no scriptural authority, just as if an apostle never countenanced protracted meetings, or early admissions into the church, or an itinerant ministry and again it is said that they have scriptural authority, just as if any apostle ever encouraged whispering meetings, and anxious seats, and censorious, preaching prayers. Both parties are right and both wrong, in some respects; and both will continue to dispute until they unite in the imitation of the broad apostolic principle, to adopt all and only those measures which, from

their relation to the human mind, and the genius of the Gospel, promise to do, not merely good, but permanent good.

It is said by some, that the apostles preached against all litigation before the national courts; if this were true, it would not follow, as some injuriously pretend, that we should preach against all appeals to our national courts; for our courts are so different from the heathen, that objections against these are not equal objections against those. It is said by some, that the apostles never preached against political slavery, and therefore the time will never come when we can properly preach against it. But may there be no reason why a few men, supported by few and feeble churches, introducing a new religion, and struggling against many peculiar obstacles, should be silent on a political theme; and yet should "change their voice," whenever the government became less despotic, freedom of speech less hazardous, and the probability of success in their labors for emancipation less decidedly negative? Might not Paul recommend to American apostles, at some future time, if not now, a course which himself, as a Roman apostle, could not pursue? Is not the question partly one of expediency; and will not a rigid adherence to apostolic example, whenever the apostle's difficulties shall be surmounted, make the pulpit less efficient than was Paul's in exterminating slavery? Is silence when we can speak, the same in significancy, as silence when we cannot speak without becoming slaves ourselves?

It is said that the apostles banished from their preaching all metaphysics and philosophy. This does not happen to be true, but even if it were, would it follow that men who have read the Novum Organum, should be addressed as the men who had not ; and that we may not reason philosophically with philosophers, just as Paul reasoned judaistically with Jews? But it is further said that the apostles not merely rejected human science, but also positively condemned it; and because Paul urged upon the Colossians to "beware lest any man spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit," and upon Timothy to "avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called," therefore we should urge upon men to guard against scientific curiosity. But we forget, in our condemnation of human reasonings, that the philosophy, which Paul condemned, was mere cabalistic jargon; that the general spirit of it was developed by the frivolous judgments "in meat, or in drink, or in respect of