Monday morning as a part of the perishable matter of a daily paper. What mind is able to remain spiritual and single-eyed to the great end, amid such distractions as these? Can a more unnatural and factitious ministry be imagined than this? Yet this is essentially unavoidable in all populous and influential

centres.

Besides when he is in his most spiritual duties, and in his best estate, pouring out his excited soul over the 66 great sea of upturned faces" beaming under the strong gas-light, and all highly pleased and, it may be, deeply moved, even then how evanescent the impression made! How it vanishes, when the gas is turned off! Short-lived, because extravagant, unnatural, and out of season! Of all the dreamy visions that float across the sky of the reader's memory, doubtless none are now more hazy, unreal, and uninfluential than the recollections of the brilliant, and it may be, powerful evening efforts of popular preachers which he has undergone in city churches.

How unlike is all this to calm, spiritual, lucid discourse called out by the known wants of a quiet, simple-hearted people. These brilliant and spirited, but short-lived charges upon the citadels of the human heart, how unlike they are, and as inferior as they are unlike, to the steady and cumulative influence of a long-settled pastor, growing among a growing people, leading out his flock and calling them all by name for a whole generation or more.

No popular preachers in centres of influence ever did their work more thoroughly than Drs. Griffin and Beecher when in the Park Street and Bowdoin Street churches of Boston. But in point of vital and lasting influence, what were these central churches in the metropolis of New England, compared with the rural parish in Franklin, even allowing that only the half is true of what Dr. Emmons's admirers claim for him? Truth is, popular speakers in the centres of influence have something else to do than to elaborate strong systems, or plant principles and watch their slow growth. Their life is all a brisk skirmish or heated battle, day by day, for specific results then and there. They have little to do with the grand and slow campaigns which settle the boundaries of nations for ages.

We are not saying but these popular centres must be occupied by somebody, and the unequal battle there be maintained

as best it may. But we are only insisting upon it, out of the love we bear our young brethren just entering the ministry, that these oft-coveted posts of honor are desirable only as early martyrdom for the truth is desirable.

And so we are constrained to say that some central parishes are very cruel. Considering their part only in this matter, and judging of it only from its outward seemings, one might conclude that their mission is to crush the fresh hopes of young ministers as the elephant crushes tender vegetation. Or one might compare them to the Winans Steam-Gun, which draws down shot into a central hopper in order then to hurl them off by a terrific centrifugal force, towards the periphery of things. And this, some of them are ever doing. They do nothing else. Their taste is formed to this, and they gratify and strengthen it by short pastorates and broken-down ministers.

It should be added, also, that some kind friends are both cruel and short-sighted. As, for instance, those who will venture all this for favorite sons or nephews, in face of the fearful odds against them; or they who hazard all this for favorite pupils who give promise of establishing an improved theology in important centres ;- without first sitting down and counting the cost, as the Great Teacher counsels those to do who propose war at a dire, disadvantage.

Young ministers should think twice before they accept the advice of any dear or ambitious friend as to a settlement. If they covet a central position, they are presumptively unfit for it, and may only take a battery which they cannot hold. If they willingly yield to the partiality of friends who desire for them a position, the failure will be none the less certain, and the mortification of a surrender none the less keen. The shells fly remorselessly, and burst without discriminating nicely whether you rushed in headlong of your own accord, or were pitched in headlong by indiscreet friends. The two dangers combined are practically irresistible. With a reputation to be made hastily, and with zealous admirers to cry-On, Brother, on! it is not in human nature to be cool and prudent. The eyes enamored of some Big Bethel are not on the sharp lookout for masked batteries along the way.

ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel."-1 Cor. ix. 16.

EVERYBODY professes admiration of the Apostle Paul. Yet, as judged by the maxims which govern even the better portion of worldly men, Paul threw himself away. For he sacrificed the most brilliant prizes that can tempt the ambition of man, because he would preach a gospel which men did not want to hear. The Augustan age still lingered; Seneca and Persius and Quintus Curtius and the elder Pliny were his contemporaries. With his profound philosophical mind, his genius and versatility, what laurels he might have won in the field of literature, art, eloquence or statesmanship.

Even in the pulpit he might have risen to high eminence without preaching a gospel which men did not want to hear. As a Hebrew preacher, the whole broad field of morality was open to him, and men would have listened and applauded. What masterly orations he might have delivered on the Flood, and the Red Sea, and Moses, and Elijah, and David, and Ahithopel, and Balaam, and Nebuchadnezzar! Or, under the garb of a Christian profession, he could have discoursed with great effect on the dignity of man, and the amplitude of the Divine love, and all without preaching a gospel which men did not want to hear, and the fashionable people of Ephesus and Rome and Corinth would have crowned him with their praises. Paul knew all this; yet he says, "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel."

What was the gospel which Paul preached? Salvation by grace to men born in sin, totally depraved and under just sentence of eternal condemnation. Justification by faith, through Christ's righteousness; regeneration by the Holy Spirit; repentance toward God, a holy life, and final resurrection to immortal glory, according to God's eternal purpose and grace.

Why would Paul preach this gospel, so bringing on himself obloquy, and poverty, and suffering, and persecution, and death? Because God had taught him that it was true. He was a converted man; was made to understand that all his high morality and external religiousness could not save him, nothing but the blood of Christ. And knowing that what was true in his own case was true in the case of all men, could he have kept back the gospel, without being false to God as well as to his own conscience, and incurring a dreadful penalty?

But he was under a direct command to preach the gospel. The whole affair was Christ's institution for his own eternal glory in the salvation of men. Was Paul the man to disobey Christ's command, or trifle with Christ's ordinances?

The same gospel is committed unto us. Men are still perishing eternally in sin, and the preaching of the word is to-day Christ's institution and ordinance for their salvation.

Who but converted men shall preach; and how shall they escape the "woe," if they preach not the gospel?

How broad and deep the Apostle lays his foundation, so that the superstructure reared thereupon shall be shaken by no storm, undermined by no flood. Forbearance would seem to be a simple and obvious grace for men all conscious of manifold imperfections and sins; yet the Apostle enjoins it upon the Ephesians only when he has laid in a strong foundation all the doctrines of Christianity; — the Divine love to men dead in trespasses and sins; God's eternal purpose to save; redemption through the blood of his Son Jesus Christ; the new birth by the Holy Spirit; adoption into his family; a gracious justification and a gracious perseverance.

There have always been religious teachers, and the race is not extinct, who will go about building up the fair superstructure of godliness without God's foundation. Decrying doctrines as stale and unprofitable, they will make men good by a briefer process.

Paul did not believe that so obvious a duty as forbearance could stand on any narrower foundation than the whole system of Christian truth. The injunction of the text is to Christians, therefore, those who are on the Divine foundations by faith.

The duty enjoined is patience among fellow-Christians toward each other under the provocations which must be always arising from the imperfections common to all — patience in the spirit of love, the love of which Christ is the common centre, and which binds them together as one in him. A kind feeling and a uniformly kind deportment, in words and actions, is the fulfilling of this royal law.

The duty is enforced by a regard to your own spiritual health and peace of mind. The opposite temper is always attended with discomfort and unprofitableness. It is enforced by a regard for the brethren. It is the sweetest and most impressive sermon to them for their good. The brother whom you cannot win by forbearance you are hardly likely to win in any other way. By a regard for the unconverted the

duty of Christian forbearance is enjoined. Can there be a stronger appeal to them, or one which God is more likely to bless, than Christian brethren walking in the spirit of mutual kindness and long-suffering, even as Jesus Christ? A regard for the Redeemer's glory is the last and highest consideration. The world will always look for the image of Christ in those who bear his name, and will look to see it most of all in the passive graces. Moreover, has not Christ constituted them his living epistle, known and read of all men? Blessed are they in whose hearts is a habitual and paramount regard for the glory of Jesus Christ!

ARTICLE X.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Du Chaillu's Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. With numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1861. 8vo. pp. 531.

WE have a new theory to propose that the Land of Ham was "raised up" for the express purpose of making the fortune of our Circulating Libraries; the grateful proprietors of which ought forthwith to present the author of this marvellous book (for the full length titlepage of which we have not space) with the freedom of their shelves, in a quarter size bronze gorilla of the ugliest contour and phiz in all this collection of grinning and glowering wood-cuts. We suppose this must be a true history in the main; but if it is entirely so, then we are almost ready for a submarine hunt, next year, among the mermaids and sea-serpents, with stuffed specimens brought back to substantiate the veracity of the salt-water Nimrod who shall attempt the chase. For, if there should be a dash of nineteenth-century invention, amounting to a little more than allowable word-painting, in the thrilling narrative, who could invalidate the record any more than in, for example, the present foray into parts so thoroughly unknown to ninety-nine of every hundred of ordinary folk. Men who spend years in "the chase of the gorilla, the crocodile, leopard, elephant, hippopotamus, and other animals," and who have the wondrous luck of discovering new varieties by the dozen when the old ones "give out," of course must have a story to tell us home-stayers which ought to make each particular hair stand on end. Ours we are sure would if we should find ourself vis-a-vis with one of those horrid brutes, whose