down, without finding their Icarian wings or angelic interposition sufficient to save them from severe injury. For one, who stands "to justify the ways of God to man," to defer diligent and thoughtful preparation for his office, relying on some sudden effluence of religious feeling, is to forswear reason and scoff at the economy of God. Piety, therefore, is not something to be set over against rhetoric, as a contrary quality, but as coincident with it. Rhetoric is not an artifice, but a reality. Its laws have their origin in our intellectual and moral natures. These possess an invariable quality. Whoever speaks with success must conform to these; and a more accurate definition of our present topic would be the coincidence between the impulses of piety and the canons of persuasive speech. A great principle is embodied in the familiar expression of the apostle," godliness is profitable unto all things;" and that man has already attained to great knowledge whose experience has taught him, that success in this present life and his well-being in the life which is to come lie precisely along the same line; and that the very thing which is essential to the salvation of his own soul, is itself of the highest service in all the relations and departments of life. The proper employments of the man, and the Christian, never cross each other at angles. They are like a series of circles, in which the greater includes the less. Science and philosophy have done but little which religion would not have enabled them to do better; while religion accomplishes much, which, without her aid, science and philosophy could never do at all. These subordinate uses of religion have as yet been imperfectly developed. The more of them we discover, the better will religion be understood, as the diamond's beauty is displayed the more it is revolved. What is essential to the preacher's highest success? For the ultimate law of that success we stop not short of the eternal throne itself. This admission, however, so far from superseding our present inquiry, serves only to enhance its practical importance; for we would know, whether in the appointment of God himself, there are any methods and laws of speech which are better adapted to convince, persuade and convert than all others. Our reply is definite. The success of the preacher, under God, depends on two things: I. What he preaches, and, II. How he preaches. As to the subject matter of the ministry, it has been defined by the Author of the ministry himself. Not every thing which is proclaimed, even eloquently, from the pulpit, is fitted to the great end and object of the pulpit. The gospel, by which we are to understand that assemblage of truths, which cluster around the central fact of a Saviour's mediation, is the one efficient means, appointed of God, for human salvation. The early heralds of the gospel, whose first announcements of it were attended with effects little short of miraculous, renounced every theme, save Christ, and him crucified. Substitute any thing for this, it will be powerless to save. First of all, then, we assert, that without piety in his own heart, the preacher can never comprehend the import of that message, in which is involved the whole secret of his success. Something more than genius and erudition is necessary to discern the gospel aright. Nor is this a matter of mere reasoning; but an assertion of inspiration also. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." "Non sine lumine,"-useless without the sun, was the trite motto on the old-fashioned sundial. Artificial light will not tell the time. A candle will not cast a true shadow. The interior illumination of the Spirit of God is indispensable to a correct perception of God's own truth. To many the gospel remains a mystery still, not because it is so recondite, but because it is so simple. Simplicity and lowliness of heart alone comprehend it. The late Mr. Wilberforce, who was, as all know, a man of distinguished piety, on one occasion prevailed on William Pitt, then prime minister of the kingdom, to accompany him to hear that eminently spiritual man, Richard Cecil, upon whose ministry Mr. W. at that time attended. The pious preacher delivered a most striking and luminous discourse on some of the leading points of Christian faith and Christian duty. It was a discourse which struck Mr. Wilberforce as being unusually imbued with a spirit of fervent piety and evangelical truth. When the service was over and they quitted the chapel, Wilberforce asked Mr. Pitt what he thought of the sermon. The answer of the illustrious statesman was, that he "did not understand one word of all he had heard; and that he could not, indeed, have been more ignorant of the preacher's meaning, if, instead of addressing his audience in English, he had spoken all the time in an unknown language." No doubt there was many an obscure individual in the galleries of St. John's chapel, on that very occasion, who not only understood but enjoyed those words, drawing refreshment from them, as the thirsty plant drinks in the dews of the evening. Spiritual affections alone discern that which is spiritual. The rill is tuneless to his ear Who has no inward beauty none perceives, The gospel is addressed to the moral sense; and if that be bleared or blunted, the gospel must remain an enigma. If the eye be dark, how great is the darkness! It was not till Thomas Scott began to pray, like a little child, as advised by his friend Newton, that the mystery of Christ was unfolded to him. Who has not experienced the effect of religious feeling in the alertness, and brightness, and distinctness of his mental perceptions? Ere the break of day we look to the right hand and to the left, and nothing is there but cold and shapeless mist. But when the sun is up and the mist has rolled away, the cultivated field, the smiling village and the solemn wood are all before us. It is sanctified affection which throws sun-light over the objects of spiritual intellection. He alone who walks with God, in the daily converse of prayer, knoweth the mind of God; and he only who weeps with Jesus Christ in the garden, and at the cross, disciplining himself in all the processes of piety, is qualified, as by a new sense, to understand his words and his salva tion. The doctrine of Christ crucified is not a bare and isolated proposition. Infinite in number and variety are the truths to which it is related. When the apostle avowed his purpose to know nothing but the cross of Christ, his meaning obviously was that all truth was, ever after, to be contemplated by him, in its proper connection with this vital fact. Here, then, we have one of those simple principles which are essential to the success of every preacher of the gospel. Truth warped and distorted out of its proper proportions is truth no longer. "There is," says Pascal," but one indivisible point from which a picture should be contemplated. Every other is too high or too low; too near or too distant. Perspective fixes this point in the art of painting." There is such a thing as doctrinal perspective. Every thing depends, in the study of theology, upon obtaining the right point of observation. The several "distributions and partitions of truth," disjoined from that one stem and trunk which gives unity to the whole system, are as incoherent and unintelligible as the leaves which the Sybil scattered to the wind. Every thing in astronomy depends upon what is made to occupy the centre, the earth or the sun. That philosophy-a form of Fichteism-which has recently obtained no inconsiderable notoriety in our land, and from which, when fully espoused, consequences most disastrous are, with good reason, to be apprehended, places man in the centre of its system. Its total creed is resolvable into one idea, if that be intelligible, universal humanity. "To be a man is greater than to be a Christian," is its first and frequent assertion. Jesus Christ, instead of being the sun and centre, is only a star of lesser magnitude, like many others, which shine away on the outer periphery. All the notions which it holds concerning divine rule, authority and inspiration are the legitimate products of this one grand mistake, man made to occupy the place of God; a mistake concerning which it is difficult to decide, whether it is more revolting to reason, or the meek piety which delights to lie humble before God. "Behold," said one, aptly, years ago, "the progeny of human pride, the Creator the creature! the creature the Creator! Enter into the temple of his worship the walls of that house do but reflect back his own image; the spirit that fills it is pride; its shecinah is self." Now, so it is, that the spot which piety has chosen for its retired abode is the one, the only one which commands the right aspect of every revealed truth. The sacred mount where the Saviour bled is the point of observation, from which all objects are to be contemplated, and according to which they receive their coloring, their shading, their prominence and their distance. All the doctrines, facts and precepts of Scripture together form a series of concentric circles. He who stands at any point in the circumference of one sees only one radius, or a small segment of a subject; but he whose position is the very centre of the whole is in a condition to survey -"the great eternal scheme Involving all"-_ SECOND SERIES, VOL. VII. NO. I. 7 To preach Christ is to preach all truth in its relation to Christ. He who mistakes here, mistakes totally and fatally. The law of God is not to be preached as if it were opposed to the gospel, but as blended with it; according to the fine expression of Mr. Coleridge, as the "co-organized part of one organic whole." He who should preach the doctrine of election, as a cold, abstract and philosophic idea, does not preach it as it is revealed to us in Scripture; where it is set forth in warm and living union with the cross of Christ, a truth most practical and animating, the brightest star which shines on the benighted soul of man. The decrees of God are not the unfeeling doctrine of the fatalist, crushing hopes and hearts; invariably are they presented by the inspired writers, in connec tion with the planning of the atonement. There is no canon of sacred rhetoric of greater importance to be observed by him who would be wise to win souls, than this; and we repeat again, that simple piety in the preacher's heart leads him most easily to conform to it. The mind, by the principles of its constitution, associates every thing with that which occupies the place of its master-passion. What else is piety than an absorption of the soul in the love of Christ? It lives, and lingers, and looks and loves, where love was martyred; and hence, as by instinct, it sees and feels what is the "proportion of faith;" it graduates the importance of every doctrine by measuring its distance from the centre, and resolving all truth into one great fact, qualifies one, at once, to obtain that "intuition of unity, which is the end of all philosophy." If the success of the preacher depends, under God, on what he preaches, then is it important to observe in farther illustrating this part of our subject, that high spiritual attainments most effectually preserve him from those topics of discourse which vitiate the eloquence of the pulpit. Conspicuous among these is controversial preaching. Far are we from implying that there are no occasions in which the preacher of the gospel is justified in direct attempts to controvert the opinions of others. We refer to that which is habitual, -the product of a controversial spirit. If it be a law of the mind, that the emotions correspond to those objects, with which the attentive faculties are most conversant, how little tendency can there be, in this style of discourse, to excite religious affections. It may make logicians acute and skilful, but never converts to Christ. It may make theologians, but Christians sel |