Samuel the Ruler

In the county of Forfar is a city which, though more than once carried by storm, sacked and burned by the armies of England, possesses some interesting ecclesiastical ruins. Close by its old cathedral stands the finest specimen extant of those round towers, whose origin is lost amid the mists of an extreme antiquity. England hasnone. They were once rather numerous in Ireland: and Scotland retains still the only two she ever had — one at Brechin, the other, a much less imposing structure, at Abernethy, on the banks of the Tay. Like the fires that blaze from many a height and hill on the night of St. John’s day, like the practice, not everywhere yet fallen into desuetude, of visiting certain wells and washing with dew on the first morning of May, these towers are believed by many to be vestiges of old Pagan worship. They bear a remarkable resemblance to some structures found in India: and like the customs I have referred to, are supposed by some to have been connected with the adoration of the sun — that form of idolatry which appeared at an early period among the descendants of Noah, and was carried along with them, as they advanced in successive waves, over the face of the unpeopled earth.

Near by that tower in Brechin, and forming the last battle-field in our island against the aggressions of Papal Rome, stood a principal station of the Culdees- — those first and early missionaries who, coming originally from Ireland, and having their chief seat in Iona, converted the Scotch to the Christian faith, and the inhabitants also of the northern parts of England. Their college, of which the name, attached to some gardens, still survives, stood under the shadow of that beautiful tower; and it was probably from their hands that it received — in a figure of our Lord on the cross, which stands above the doorway, flanked on either side by the mouldering form of a pilgrim — the Christian emblems it bears. It was a questionable policy, still it was a common practice with many of the early Christian missionaries, for the purpose of winning over the people from heathenism and of recommending the new faith, to link it on to the old. For example, they appointed Christian festivals to be celebrated at the time set apart by use and wont for heathen ones. Hence the festival of St. John’s day was held at the time the heathens had been accustomed to celebrate the rites of Baal, and kindle fires in honor of their god. Hence, also, the name of Easter, which is said to be borrowed from the worship of Astarte, or Ashtaroth, or the Queen of Heaven, or the moon; and hence the crosses that were cut by the early missionaries, and may still be seen in Brittany, on its numerous menhirs — those vast monoliths of granite which are supposed to have belonged to the old Druidical worship, and were everywhere regarded by the people with feelings of sacred veneration. Abutting against this old round tower,

and casting its shadow over the site of the college of the Culdees, stands the cathedral, with its gray steeples and roofless chancel,a monument of Popish times. It is now the parish church, having been turned into a place of Protestant worship; though, like cathedrals everywhere, with its long lines of massive Gothic pillars, as little fitted as it was intended for the preaching of the Gospel. Thus, and there, within a space more limited than is perhaps to be found anywhere else, — as a geological map shows the various strata that constitute the crust of the earth, — this old city of Forfarshire shows us in Pagan, in Culdee, in Popish, and in Protestant objects, monuments of the successive religious faiths and forms of the country.

Removed by some distance from these, and almost concealed from view in an obscure zwyzd, or alley, of the same town, stand the ruins of an old chapel As an acknowledgment of God’s overruling providence and an expression of man’s devout gratitude, it has a sacred and instructive history. On this account, though the shafts of its windows are shattered, and. broken, and the teeth of time have left little else on its mouldering walls than the faint traces of angel and saintly figures, and though since I remember, profaned, as some would say, to the base purposes of byres and stables, these ruins form one of the most interesting of the relics that cluster about that old town. Standing for six hundred years, they have had a long life; yet their history may be briefly told.

In those rude times which long preceded the birth of science in our country, when there was no appliance of steam to wear vessels off the dangers of a lee-shore, nor lights shone forth on sunken reef or rocky headland to guide them through the gloom of night, one of the royal family of Scotland was in imminent hazard of shipwreck. After every effort had been made, but made in vain, to wear off shore, he vowed a vow that if God would interpose to deliver them from death, he would build and endow a chapel, as an acknowledgment of God’s gracious interposition and an expression of his own gratitude. They were saved. In the words of the Psalm, ‘‘ They looked unto Him and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed: this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” And, though a Papist, a better man than many Protestants who forget, in the day of returned health or prosperity, the vows and resolutions formed in an hour of trouble, he fulfilled his promise. In the erection of Wazson Dieu Chapel, for so it is called, David, Earl of Huntingdon, paid -his vow. Associated though it be with popish superstitions, it sprung from higher motives than either ecclesiastical pride or sectarian rivalry; and humble as these ruins are now, they form a venerable and interesting memorial of the simple faith, and devout piety, that ever and anon, like the blaze of a brilliant meteor, lighted up the long night of the dark ages of the Church.

Such dedications and vows, as those to which that chapel owed its existence, have fallen into too great disuse. They may indeed be made to assume the profane appearance of driving a bargain with God — such a bargain as man makes with his fellows on ’change, or in the market. They are not to be made as if we could purchase the divine favor; or, as if God were to be propitiated by any offerings of ours; or, as if demanding, if I may say so, a guid pro quo, He gave nothing but “for a consideration.”

Such ideas are involved in many popish vows. ‘They run counter to the blessed truth that He who spared not his own Son will with him also freely give us all things. Dishonoring the character of God, popery makes merchandise of his mercy; and practically denying salvation by his free grace and the blood of his Son Jesus Christ, sells pardons for money, and makes profit out of sins. But her abuses ought not.to have been allowed to bring into disrepute a class of vows for which we have the highest authority — a service it were graceful in Christians to render, and, in Hannahs dedicating their children, and people their substance, to God,’ it were well for the interests of his Church to revive. Such vows were made in its earliest ages, and by its most distinguished saints; and, as in the case of him who said on the eve of battle, “If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be that whatever cometh out of the doors of my house to meet me shall surely be the Lord’s,” they were faithfully performed — even where they involved the greatest sacrifices. Take these examples. On that sacred spot where Jacob, fleeing from a brother’s wrath, saw the ladder that, alive with angels, some ascending and some descending, rose from earth and reached to heaven, he vowed such a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God; and this stone which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house; and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” David also teaches us by his example to join promises to prayer, and undertake, if our requests are granted, to express our gratitude by gifts as well as by words. He says, alluding to some time of sore and heavy trials, ‘Thou, O God, hast proved us; thou hast tried us as silver is tried; thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction on our loins; thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. I will go into thy house with burnt offerings; I will pay thee my vows which my lips have uttered, and my mouth hath spoken, when I was in trouble.”

The devout, but too much neglected, practice which these famous saints observed, Hannah also recommends to our imitation. It was in the performance of such a vow that she returned to the house of God, not empty-handed; but to earn, if I may say so, the high encomium pronounced on her of whom our Lord said, “She hath given all she had.” In that child of prayer, her only son, the boy whom she leads lovingly by the hand, Hannah presented to God a gift more beautiful and costly, more precious far, than Jacob’s tithe of corn and cattle, or David’s richest spoils of war. It wrings her heart to part with him. Without her boy, his prattling tongue, and pattering feet, and playful sports, and fond caresses, how dull and dreary her home will seem! But she got him from God, and to God she is here to give him — as taking Samuel by the hand she goes up to Eli, saying, ‘‘Oh my lord, as thy sou!

liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by thee praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; a3 long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.”

A blessed contrast to another woman, the unhappy partner of Ananias’ guilt and also of his doom, who, pretending, while a part was withheld, that the whole price had been given, lied to the Holy Ghost, Hannah, in going to perform her vow, like a martyr marching to the stake, ‘‘ walks in her integrity.” Her case was different from ours. We enter into the engagements of a communion-table publicly, and before the Church -calling God and man to witness that we give ourselves to Christ, and will die with, rather than deny, Him. It is well to do so. The publicity of our vows helps to the performance of them. For, though the dominent power in the heart of every Christian will be the love of Christ — that love which constraineth us to judge that if one died for all then were all dead, and that He died that they who live should not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them — we are none the worse, but the better of auxiliary motives. With the tide running strong against him, setting earthward, he who would go to heaven will find he needs to crowdall sailupon the mast. There are circumstances in which, unless we would abandon the path of duty, we must take up a position against — the world, and say with Paul, “It is a small thing for me to be judged of man’s judgment; He that judgeth me is God;” yet it will often help to keep us on our guard, and out of the ways of sin, to feel that the eye of others is upon us; that we have bound ourselves publicly, before the church and world, to pay our vows and live consistently with our Christian profession. But Hannah’s case was peculiar. She might, repenting of her vow, have hept back not a part of the price, but the whole; nor thereby laid herself open to challenge or censure; to the taunts of Peninnah, her enemy, or of any one else. When she vowed that if God would give her a son, he should be the Lord’s, Eli saw her lips move; but no more — and hearing nothing took her for a drunken woman. Only God and she herself knew what these lips had said. That was enough for Hannah. It should be so for us. “Thou God seest me,” should place us in circumstances of greater restraint than broad daylight, the public street, the eyes of a theatre of spectators; even so it was a sufficient reason for Hannah performing her vow that God had heard the words of her noisless lips, and that the vow, though a secret to others, was none to Him. Though in accents inaudible to mortal ears, she had opened her mouth to the Lord; and when her heart gave way as she looked on her boy, and kissed him, and thought how much she should miss him, and how dull and dreary home would be without him, her answer to Nature- — to all the mother yearning within her — was Jephthah’s, as, bending over his daughter, his only beloved child, he exclaimed, “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back!”

A woman and a mother, one in whose heart Samuel filled up the great blank, by his birth rolling away her reproach, and brightening the whole world to her, Hannah paid her vow with a resolution equal to Jephthah’s. In this, in dedicating Samuel to the Lord, and parting with him, how does ‘she

put us to shame ! — presenting an example of gratitude to God, and a pious regard for his honor and service, which few do, and yet all should try to emulate. To any mother, but especially to one of her keen and lively sensibilities, the parting with her son at his tender age must have been felt an awful wrench — the next thing to death, nor that a common death, but the bereavement whose grief He who knows a parent’s feelings selects as that which our sorrow for sin should resemble, saying, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced, and mourn as one mourneth for an only son, and be in bitterness as one is in bitterness for a first-born.” Samuel was Hannah’s only son, and, at that time, her only child.

It is to the honor of Hannah’s sex that the only -

two offerings on which Jesus, He who offered himself for her and us on the cross, ever bestowed the need of his applause, were both made by women. The one was a widow. Poor, and meanly clad, in her offering as much as in her dress, she presented a remarkable contrast to many who, sweeping into the house of God, attired in all the gayeties of changing fashions, give a wide berth to the plate at the door, or drop into the offertory, without a blush of shame, the merest, meanest pittance. Though but two mites, hers was a munificent gift, being her little all. “Verily,” said our Lord to his disciples, as he pointed her out to their notice and admiration — ‘‘ Verily, I say unto you, this poor widow hath cast more in than all they have cast into the treasury; for all they” — meaning those among whose shining heap of gold and silver her mites seemed mean, and unworthy of a place — ‘“‘all they did cast in of their abundance, but she of her want did cast in all she had, even all her living.” The other woman, praised by Him whom all heaven praises, was one — strange as it will appear to such as have not reflected on the blessed truth, that a fallen is not necessarily a Jost woman — from whose touch decency and decorum shrinks. As the phrase went, “she was a sinner.” Lying, where all have need, and the purest love, to lie, at Jesus’ feet, she washes them with a flood of tears; and, shaking put her golden locks, she wipes them with the hairs of her head: with mingled reverence and affection, kisses them; and, taking an alabaster box of pretious ointment, pours its fragrance on the feet that for her, and us, were to be nailed on Calvary. Simon,” said our Lord to the Pharisee who would aave driven the penitent from his door, and indeed doubted whether our Lord could be a prophet because he had allowed her to touch him — “Simon, seest thou this woman? [entered into thine house — thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she hath washed my feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thcu gavest me ne kiss, but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed iny feet with ointment.” Why was this waste of the ointment made?” — ‘“Let her alone. Verily, I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.”

Beside these women Hannah deserves a place. In her dedication of Samuel, in giving him up who was the light of her eyes and the joy of her home, she parted for God’s sake and his service with the costliest, the most prized and precious, thing in her possession. Her only son, and indeed her only child, in giving him — with a munificence not second, but in some aspects superior, to the widow’s — she gave all she had. It was a great sacrifice. Yet to emulate and even surpass it, were that possible, nothing more is necessary than that we form an adequate estimate of what we owe for, and owe to, Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit help us to do so! Did we estimate and feel that aright, in what willing services, by what costly gifts, through what munificent offerings, in what noble sacrifices, should we embody the rapt and grateful exclamation of the Apostle. ‘Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”

Before turning the dedication of Samuel to a practical, and — especially in these days, when there is so much need of more ministers and a better provision for them — to a very important practical use, let me observe, that though we may have to wait for the reward and recompense in heaven, Hannah had not so long to wait. She says of Samuel, “I have /en¢ him to the Lord;” and God paid her good interest for the loan. Being her chief earthly enjoyment, was he, so to speak, her life? Ages before the great words were uttered by the lips of Jesus, she proved the truth of His saying, ‘‘ Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” She got

back all, and more than all, she had lost — she had given away. “There is that scattereth,” says the wise man, ‘‘and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat.” Such was Hannah’s experience. She gave away ‘one child, and God paid her back with five; and promptly too. When taking farewell of her boy, she had wept over him, and kissed him, and torn herself away from his embraces and entwining arms, and gone to her lonely home, it is said, ‘‘ The Lord visited Hannah, so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters.” And, at some time, in some form or other, the offerings we present to God, the bread our faith casts upon the waters, will return. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not this word: ‘‘ THERE IS NO MAN THAT HATH LEFT HOUSE, OR BRETHREN, OR SIS-TERS, OR FATHER, OR MOTHER, OR WIFE, OR CHILDREN, OR LANDS, FOR MY SAKE AND THE GOSPEL’S, BUT SHALL RECEIVE AN HUNDRED-FOLD NOW IN THIS TIME, AND IN THE WORLD TO COME ETERNAL LIFE.”

HIS DEDICATION.

To turn the dedication of Samuel to a seasonable and important use, let me ask why so few parents now follow Hannah’s example? why so few either dedicate themselves, or are dedicated by others to the Christian ministry? When other professions are overstocked, why is it that almost all the churches, both in this country and in America, are complaining of a lack of candidates for the sacred office, and especially of such as possess not only the piety, but the talents and culture which it requires?

Without looking to the claims of the heathen world, which, with 600,000,000 of human beings left to perish for lack of missionaries, is crying, ‘Come over and help us,” or to the state of Europe — to so great an extent either bound in the chains of Popery, or drifting, like a vessel broken loose from its anchors, away from all religious faith, our own country requires a much larger staff of ministers. Not otherwise are its overgrown cities to be redeemed from a state of practical heathenism; not otherwise are the civil and religious privileges which our fathers watered with their tears and nourished with their blood, to be preserved from ruin — certain and not very distant ruin. Take London, for instance. Its condition, as ascertained by inquiries in connection with Bishop Tait’s Fund, is alarming, and indeed appalling. Look at this extract from its report; and let my readers, while studying it, bear in mind that in the estimates which the Bishop makes, the presence and labors of Dissenters are not ignored; a large margin is left for the efforts they make to supply the spiritual necessities of the diocese: ‘‘We have now to state the result of our inquiries into the present religious condition of the diocese of London. From the returns obtained at this time, and from other sources, it appears that out of all the parishes and districts included in the diocese (amounting to about 450), about 239 are already provided up to the measure of the standards adopted. They will, therefore, for the present be left out of consideration in estimating the wants of the diocese. The remaining 211 parishes have been classed as follows, according to the amount of their deficiency:

L As regards deficiency of clergy, — one clergyman only.

Class. Parishss. Gross population i for. 8,000.and upwards... :>.<Lliii ccc. sacs 228,000 IL from 6,000 to 8,000.......... 14 ce ceca 171,400 TER 4,000 to: 6,000. ..65 53k: BO Sohecncee 757,300 EVer ee: 2,000 to 4,000.0. 02... MLO ne caiectee oe 3s 919,300

Noé deficient in clergy, but in ’

church-room...... Spe atelea Se Diieacecc eet 74,000 PEODEML Ie feSterei* fers sisters nis wie’e cores PE pet ar As 2,150,000

The total population of those 211 deficient parishes is about 2,150,000, the number of clergy is 582. But this number of clergy on the standard assumed is sufficient for the supervision of 1,164,000 only (making allowance, as we have done, for the labors of other religious bodies); there remains, therefore, a population of very nearly 1,000,000 of persons for whom a further provision of 500 clergy would be required.”

The diocese of London alone, taking into account the proportion of the different Dissenting bodies, requires for a sufficient spiritual provision nearly One Thousand additional ministers of the gospel; and if so, how great must be the increase required by the whole country, with its overgrown towns, and thickly-peopled mining and manufacturing districts?

But ours are times in which quality is hardly a less important element than quantity. It is not now as in bygone days, when the pulpit was almost the only public organ, and had it all its own way. In the press and platform, in associations for science and the arts, in mechanics’ and philosophical institutions, it finds formidable rivals; not seldom formidable antagonists. The public taste, elevated by the able writing of those journals which are so widely read, demands a high style of preaching; while there is abroad such a spirit of inquiry and of lawless doubt as requires ministers thoroughly equipped for their work — highly educated and accomplished men; able to meet the sceptic on the fields of science to give a reason for the faith that is in them, to protect that of others from being rudely shaken, and to defend against all comers the integrity and authority of the Word of God.

In such circumstances it is alarming to hear on every hand, and from all the churches both of Great Britain and America, complaints that the number of those offering themselves for the ministry, instead of increasing with the increase of population, and growing with the growing wants of society, is falling off; and that the candidates are not only falling off in numbers, but in many instances in fitness for the work. The number of them, for example, from the universities at Oxford and Cambridge during the ten years preceding 1864 fell off by eighty a-year. ‘It is certain,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury in his primary charge delivered in the above-mentioned year, “it is certain from correct statistical returns, that the number of candidates ordained as deacons has diminished in the last ten years on an average of sixty-five per year.” Nor are matters improved since then. For what is the conclusion at which one thoroughly conversant with the subject has arrived? “It appears,” he states, ‘that the number of clergymen ordained is not only decreasing, but in an increasing ratio, while the proportion of university men is declining, and of “terates (candidates who have received only an inferior education) is increasing. The calibre of those entering the ministry of late years has been gradually deteriorating, and we are threatened with one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a nation — a clergy who in intellect are not superior to the public they profess to teach.”

The existence of this evil in all churches, endowed and unendowed, Dissenting as well as Established, is unquestionable; and we should tremble for the ark of God but that we know it to be not irremediable. The Christian people of this great and wealthy nation have the remedy in their own hands. May God make them like “the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do!”

It is worse than useless to blink the matter The main reason why there are so few Hannahs among the parents of our Christian families, and why so few youths of promise and of powers come forward to offer themselves for service in the house of God, lies in the inadequate provision made for ministers: in the fact which, if people did not know, they ought to have known, that with exceptional cases, and these rare, ministers do not receive allowances sufficient for their comfortable maintenance. Many a man who spends his life in the service of the church has to struggle with pecuniary difficulties to its close, and leave, when he dies, his widow and children without the means of support.

This is true of all churches, Established and Dissenting. Take for example the Church of England — with aclergy often represented as wallowing in wealth. Their position is not seldom a very painful one; and so discreditable that I wonder how her adherents, wealthy and willing as large numbers of them are, do not of their own bounty supply what is lacking in the endowments of the Church. Years ago the condition of some of them presented itself before me in a way that equally movedsmy sorrow and astonishment. On arriving at Mr. Nisbet’s, the well-known publisher’s, Berners Street, London, a private carriage was leaving his door from which I saw a large bundle given out. On passing this bundle, which lay in the lobby, Mr. Nisbet touched it with his foot, saying, ‘‘ You’ll not guess what that is. That,” he added, “‘is old clothes, cast-off clothes for the families of poor but worthy ministers of the Church of England. I receive and distribute a large quantity of them every year, and they are most thankfully received.” I stood amazed at this; that men of education and accomplishments, of refinement and piety, who were devoting their strength and talents to the cause of our Redeemer, should be placed in such humiliating circumstances. It was a shame; but the shame did not belong to them. Yet how bitter to be reduced to the necessity of receiving such charity! — for a man of delicate feelings to see his wife, a refined and well-born and high minded lady,. walking to church with their children in cast-off clothes! I could not have been more grieved, but I should have been less astonished, had I known then, as I do now, the utterly inadequate provision made for many of the ministers of that Church. While the whole revenues of archiepiscopal and episcopal sees, of the cathedral and collegiate churches, of the several dignities and benefices of the Church of England, were they divided among all her clergy, would not yield to each more than 4259 a year, what is the actual state of matters? There are more than 5,000 livings in the Church of England which do not amount to £200a year. In Wales, in 1853, more than one-half of the benefices were below £100. In the diocese of St. David’s nearly the half were below that miserable living. In the diocese of Durham, out of 260 benefices 62 were below £150. In the diocese of Carlisle, out of 249 benefices, 151 were below £150, and 95 below even £100. And at this moment, out of 5,000 curates, most of whom have the feelings, and have received the education, and are expected to make the appearance of gentlemen, many do not receive so much as the salary of a junior clerk, or the wages of a skilled artizan.

All the churches have to take shame to themselves for the scanty provision made for their ministers. But now-a-days this long-standing grievance is greatly aggravated. Of late years our country has grown enormously in wealth. For instance, the amount of income assessable for the property and income tax in Scotland, which was twenty-one millions in 1842, had risen in 1867 to thirty-nine millions, had nearly doubled itself in that time; but no corresponding increase has been made in the allowances to ministers, endowed or unendowed. The following tables show how other classes have been benefited by the prosperity of the country. In Glasgow per week —

Masons received in 1846, 22s. 6d, but in 1866, 32s.

Blacksmiths i 18s. * 26s.
Laborers 4 15s. Hy 20s.
Slaters Hy 18s. ze 27s.

In Glasgow, per year, certain employees of commercial houses

Received in 1846, £100, but in 1866, £200

Others i” 200 350
op”” 130” 250
””” 119” 301
Lad” ty 100” 250

But while, as might be inferred from these statements, that are but specimens, all classes have largely benefited by the tide of prosperity with which God has blessed our country, those who serve at his altars, the ministers of the Gospel, have been left as poor, or rather, in consequence of the rise on prices, poorer than ever.

In a collection of old pamphlets I have found a very able and admirable address on this subject by the late Rev. Dr. Peddie, which reads so much as if it had been written for our own day that it would be well to republish it. He says:

“The circumstances of the times require that ministers of the gospel should be better educated, if possible, than when information was less generally diffused, and the learned were less generally hostile to religion; but the difficulty of obtaining persons regularly educated for the ministry has, at the same time, greatly increased. The prosperous state of our country holds out to young men, even of very moderate talents, almost as soon as they have quitted school, invitations to competency, respectability, and affluence, in many different lines of business, while the youth who would count it his honor to serve God in the Gospel of his Son, is discouraged from making the attempt, or arrested in his progress, by difficulties which he knows not how to surmount. Even pious parents who are in circumstances to educate their children for the ministry without serious inconvenience to themselves, now for the most part dissuade them. They grudge to make large advances for which they can scarcely expect any adequate return: and when they see the companions of their son, perhaps his inferiots in years and talents, already advanced far on the road to affluence, while he continues in a state of dependence, and has no prospect, however successful in his pursuit, of ever advancing many degrees beyond poverty, they think themselves justified in their attempts to induce him to abandon so unprofitable a profession. Necessity: may compel men already in the office to struggle with poverty, or they may feel it to be their duty to persevere in laboring among a people who are undutiful and unkind; but the same obligations are not upon individuals who are yet free, to devote themselves to the ministry at the expense of sacrificing those conveniences and comforts to which their station entitles them, and which many of their people enjoy.

‘‘ That some persons grudge the necessary expense of maintaining the Gospel, is too well known for us to affect to conceal it; but these, we trust, are few; and they are seldom either the best informed or the most amiable and exemplary among you. They are persons, in general, so parsimonious, and so devoted to ‘the unrighteous mammon,’ as equally to murmur at whatever is expended on the poor, on their ministers, or on themselves; or, if they are liberal in answering the calls of appetite, and in complying with every demand of fashion, and narrow only when the honor of the Gospel and the comfort of its ministers are interested, they give such decided evidence of dislike to the Gospel of Christ, and of aversion to his yoke, as justifies us in accounting them ‘spots in your feasts of charity.’ What is it that such persons would persuade you to refuse as unreasonable and oppressive? One lust is more expensive to its unhappy slave than all the ordinances of the Gospel. The idle fashions of the world, to which even the more sober among you occasionally conform, make larger demands upon you every seasen than the necessities of your ministers ever did; and they are cheerfully answered. Yea, more money is sometimes extracted from your pockets to serve up one unnecessary entertainment, than would be requisite as your individual share, in order to make your pastors and their families happy. Where, then, are your feelings as men, where your obedience and gratitude as Christians, if such small sacrifices as their comfort requires are refused? ‘Is it a great thing, that they who sow unto you spiritual things,’ should be permitted to ‘reap’ one handful of ‘your carnal things’ when so great a portion of them is suffered to run to waste? “Permit us to ask you, if every other person is entitled to recompense for his labor, by what law, either of God or man, are we bound to labor, we say not without an equitable compensation, but without even a sufficiency for present subsistence? Is labor in spiritual things the only kind of labor which deserves no recompense, and for which it is presumptuous to demand it? Does a person, by becoming a minister of the Gospel, forfeit the rights which belong to him asa man? Or does the law of God condemn in his case as a proof of a worldly spirit, that regard to his temporal provision which in every other man is a matter of prudence and an act of duty? We are bound to warn you, that ‘if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’ But must the matter be reversed when the case is ours? Must we violate the plainest dictates of duty to our families, in order to be brought to act a part becoming Christian ministers? If we possess property of our own, must we expend it, without necessity, in your service? must we render you dependent on our generosity, and at the same time rob our families of their rights? Or, if we have none, as is generally the case, must we, because you are worldly-minded, on pain of being reckoned so ourselves, suffer ourselves and our families to starve? No. We serve a good Master, who never exacted our services in the Gospel on such hard terms. When He sent us to labor among you, He committed us and our families to your protection. We are not, as some men talk, dependent on your charity for what you please to bestow; we have a claim upon your justice for what is equitable. We are entitled, in the name of the God whom we serve, to demand bread for ourselves and the children whom He hath graciously given us.

“We do not presume to state precisely what the provision is which it is your duty to bestow. This must be regulated by the circumstances of the times, the place of our residence, the necessities of our families, and the measure of your ability; for that provision may be liberal at one period, or in one situation, which would be altogether inadequate in another. We desire not to be elevated toa rank in society above that in which our station entitles us to move; but to enjoy, in our proper station, what will place us above the fears of want and the anxieties of care; what will furnish us with the necessaries, and some of the comforts of life; what will enable us to educate our children, be just to the world, hospitable to the stranger, and kind to the poor. Were we placed among a people so few and so poor as to be unable to furnish us with comforts, otherwise than by depriving themselves of necessaries, we trust that we would be reconciled to subsist on the homeliest fare till Providence should otherwise provide for us; but we are not convinced that this is our duty when we labor to hundreds, many of whom possess, if not affluence, a moderate competency of worldly goods.

“Sit down, you who have any skill in figures, and satisfy yourselves at leisure, whether we complain without reason. Place our stipends in one column, and our necessary expenditure in the other.. Value such articles as our manses require in order to be decently furnished; stock our libraries with such a moderate store of books as justice to you renders it necessary we should possess; make us such an allowance for suitable dress for ourselves and families as will prevent us from being ashamed; give us wages for servants to attend to our household affairs; pay our charges for travelling to presbyteries and synods, and to assist brethren in the dispensation of divine ordinances; add the amount of the public and local taxes which we are obliged to pay; grant us a little, that we may occasionally entertain a friend as becomes our station, and may not shut our door against the strangers who expect to be hospitably received; and entrust us with somewhat to enable us, as we are enjoined, to set an example to our flocks and to the world of compassion to the poor, of public spirit, and of readiness for every good work. When you have cast up the sum and deducted it from the stipends which we receive, inform us how much remains, we say, not to hoard, for the future, or to dissipate in luxury, but to give bread to our families, and education to children whom we cannot endow. We anticipate the surprise you must feel, that our spirits have not been crushed ere now by the difficulties of our situation; and you will give us credit for economy, if we are not in debt. We tremble for ourselves, lest, if we are not ‘fed with food convenient for us,’ we should acquire mean habits unworthy of our dignity and our station as ministers; lest we should contract vices which will blast our hitherto fair reputation, and cause religion to be ‘wounded in the house of its friends;’ lest we should become involved in debts which we are unable to pay; lest we should sink into a state of mental dejection, which will incapacitate us for the discharge of our spiritual duties; lest, in fine, when old age overtakes us, or disease seizes on us, we should murmur at the good providence of God, and be unwilling to ‘die at his commandment,’ because we must leave a family, young, uneducated, unprovided for, on the mercy of persons who were unkind to us while we lived, and will forget us and our widow and orphans after we are dead.

“Some of you, perhaps, excuse yourselves for the neglect of duty to your minister hitherto by professing ignorance of his necessities. You never observed anything in his appearance, or in that of his family, which indicated want, and you never heard him complain. If, indeed, he has suffered, affecting cheerfulness while he was burdened in spirit, and making a show of plenty while in private he was struggling with want, forgive him this wrong. But was it kind in you never to reflect on his circumstances, or to wait, if you suspected them, til. he should be constrained to ask relief? A favor derives much of its value from the grace with which it is bestowed. Your unsolicited attention to his comfort would have had a double relish, as affording not only a relief to him from his embarrassments, but an unequivocal proof of your love.

“Recollect that if every article of life is dearer to you than formerly, as well as to your minister, it is he that suffers, not you. Your wages, your profits, have increased with the incréase of charge. while his stipend continues the same. He who gave five shillings per annum for the support of the Gospel when he earned only one shilling per day, must be equally able to give ten when he earns two, and fifteen when he earns three; and when he does so, he does not in reality give more. You are able in general to give, not only in proportion to the rise of your wages and profits but even in a higher proportion. Though your own living costs you more than in former times, you are not poorer, you are richer than when it cost you less. And surely, if you are able to provide not only the same articles of life, and the same kind of clothing, but both in greater abundance and of superior quality, it will not be an easy matter to convince an impartial person that you are not able to raise the stipend of your minister to an equality in respect of value to what it formerly was; and even to augment it, that, along with you, he may enjoy a greater portion of the conveniences and comforts of life. “Remember that your minister is only a stipendiary during life or good behavior. The stipend expires with himself. It is not enough, therefore, that he enjoys barely a sufficiency for present comfortable subsistence. What is to become of his family when he dies? Must not this thought rush often into the mind of the most spiritually-minded man, and can he feel easy when his reflections are irresistibly forced into the following train? ‘My stipend has at no period exceeded my expenditure; my utmost economy has not enabled me to lay up anything in store; when I die, my congregation, among whom I have labored these many years, will treat my family as other congregations have treated the families of their ministers — they will perhaps defray the charges of my funeral; they will pay up to my mourning widow, or, if already paid, not demand back from her the stipend of the current half-year, for the whole of which death did not permit me to labor; they will boast of their generosity for having done so much beyond their obligations, and while they talk with respect of my memory, will .eave my widow and my orphans to starve.”

An adequate provision for the ministers of religion, such as God made under the Jewish, and Dr. Peddie, following in the steps of St. Paul, pleads for under the Christian economy, is so closely and certainly connected with the power of the pulpit and the welfare of precious souls — with the grand purposes of Christ’s death and the progress of his kingdom, that I regard it as one of the greatest questions of the day. Having been obliged to resign pastoral work, and no longer depending for my support on its remuneration, I feel the more free to press this matter on the Christian public; and for this purpose, since it was thought likely to serve the end in view, I will now proceed to draw on the substance of an address which I delivered to the General Assembly of the Free Church when I had the honor to preside over its deliberations.

The calamity which I stand in dread of, and which is, next to the withdrawal of the divine blessing, the greatest a church can suffer, is, that the rising talent, genius, and energy of our country may leave the ministry of the Gospel for other professions. ‘‘ A scandalous maintenance,” Matthew Henry says, “makes a scandalous ministry.” That adage I would proclaim in the public ear, and press especially on the office- bearers of the church, having that confidence in their sense of justice as to feel that there is not one in the house but will rejoice that I have taken up this topic. If “a scandalous maintenance makes a scandalous ministry,” I’ll give you another sentence equally true, — The poverty of the manse will develop itself in the poverty of the pulpit.” I have no doubt about that; and that is the evil implore you to avert. Genteel poverty ! — may you never know it ! — genteel poverty, to which some doom themselves, but to which ministers are doomed, is one of the greatest evils under the sun. Give me liberty to wear frieze, and I will thank no man for a black coat — give me liberty to rear my sons as laborers, and my daughters as domestic servants, and the manse may enjoy the same cheerful contentment that sheds sunlight on many a pious and lowly home. But to place a man in circumstances where he is expected to be generous and hospitable, to open his hand as wide as his heart to the poor, to give his family a liberal education, to breed them up according to what they call genteel life- — to place a man in these circumstances, and deny him the means of doing so, is enough, but for the hope of heaven, to embitter existence. In the dread of debt, in many daily mortifications, — meeting, perhaps, some old acquaintance whom he dare not ask to his table, lest his more prudent wife should frown upon his extravagance, — in harassing fears of what shall befall wife and children when his head lies in the grave, a man of cultivated mind and delicate sensibilities has trials to bear more painful than the privations of the poor. Though in pleading for a better provision for ministers of God’s word, I can say with Paul, ‘I have used none of these things, neither do I write these things that they may be so done to me,” let me say, I have tasted of others’ bitter cup. It isa bitter cup; and my heart bleeds for brethren who have never told their sorrows — concealing under their cloak the fox that gnaws at their vitals.

I do not altogether blame the people; I believe with the poet, that more ill is done for want of thought than for want of heart. The full truth has never been told in the public ear as I would tell it now. The livings, I do not say of this Church only, but of the ministers of all Churches, are inadequate; and I should rejoice if my words went forth on the wings of the press to do good to United Presbyterian, Congregational, and also Established Church ministers. I rejoice to see the latter getting an addition from their teinds. They feel the same discomforts as others; nor are they sustained and cheered by our hopes. I feel confident that the - rising tide of liberality will by-and-by float us over the bar into better and happier waters; but they can hardly expect from parliament what I look for with the utmost confidence from the enlarged and enlightened liberality of our people.

I know some do not like to hear of these matters; but those who like least, need most to hear of them. Some — not many, I hope — are like an honest man belonging to Aberdeenshire (I tell the story as I heard it), who, on being asked what he thought of the Free Church, replied, ‘‘Oh, I admire her principles, but I detest her schemes!” But whether people will hear, or whether they will forbear, let me now state two or three ways in which the claims of ministers are evaded. I will give you cases — these are best remembered.

In my native town, long years ago, there lived an excellent Seceder minister. His son was appointed his assistant and successor. The congregation gave the father £100 a-year, and the son £80 — a living better in those days than most ministers enjoy in these — a provision very creditable to the good old Seceders. At length the old man died, and his people met to consider what stipend should be allotted the son, now their sole pastor. The question was not whether they would allow him £180- which it ought to have been, seeing that they had proved themselves able to do so; but the matter, assuming a less generous shape, was whether they would give the son the £100 the father had received, or keep him at the £80. Well, the question was put; whereupon an honest weaver rose, and declared himself clear for keeping the incumbent at the lowest figure. He saw no reason why ministers should receive more for weaving sermons than he for weaving webs — alleging in proof of the advantage of a poor stipend that the church never had better, nor so good, ministers as when ‘“‘ they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, and lived in caves and holes of the earth.” If any sympathize with the weaver, I answer that I have an insuperable objection to ‘“‘caves and holes” — they create damp; and, secondly, as to the habiliments, it will be time enough to take up that question when our people are prepared to walk Princes-street with us — not in this antique Moderator’s dress, but in the more primitive and antiquated fashion of goatskins with the horns on. So I dispuse of such wretched evasions.

I pass on to a second, expressed in a remark which looks very pious; and is all the worse for that. It was made by a lady to the wife of an excellent minister, who, as many have been obliged to do, kept boarders to eke out a living that some of the merchant princes in his congregation could have paid out of their own pocket, and never missed it. This lady, rustling in silks, and in a blaze of jewels, went to pay a visit to her minister’s wife — more a lady than herself, with the exception of the dress. She condoled with her on their straitened circumstances, and looking into the pale, careworn face of the excellent woman, said, as she turned up the white of her eyes, “‘ But, my dear, your reward is above!” From the bloodless lips of some poor sinner in a cold unfurnished garret, where the man of God, facing fever and pestilence, has gone to smooth a dying pillow and minister consolation to life’s last dark hour, I have been thankful to hear the words, ‘‘ Your reward is above,’” — but from silks and satins, how disgusting! the vilest cant, enough to make religion stink in the nostrils of the world! Does that saying pay the minister’s stipend? Will it pay his accounts? Fancy him going to his baker or butcher, and instead of paying down money, turning up the white of his eyes to say, ‘“Your reward is above.” I fancy they would reply, ‘Oh, no, my good sir, that does not pay the bill!” Well, I say what does not pay tradesmen’s bills does not pay minister’s stipends.

There is a story much to the purpose hete, told of Christmas Evans, who, during a large part of his pastorate in Anglesea, received for his labors only 417 per annum, and never more than £30 — a miserable support for a man who gave himself up with singleness of heart to the work of the ministry. His biographer, himself a Welshman, says, “It must be numbered among the anomalies of Welsh religious life, that it combines an insatiable appetite for sermons with a marvellous disregard for the temporal comfort of the preacher.” It is a pity that this anomaly is not peculiar to Welsh religious life. On one occasion a woman said to Mr. Evans, as he came out of the pulpit, ‘Well, Christmas Evans, dach, I hope you will be paid at the resurrection; you have given us a wonderful sermon.” — “Yes, yes, Shan /fach,” was his quick reply, “no doubt of that; dut what am I to do till I get there? And there is the old white mare that carries me; what will she do? for her there will be no resurrection.” He might, it has been remarked, have said more, and with great justice. He might have added, “Yes, yes, I know that for my labors and sacrifices I shall be paid there. But what will you do? What pay will you receive then for your stinginess now?” That is the question which should come home to the hearts of ail who combine an appetite for the labors of the servant of God with a marvellous disregard for his temporal wants and comforts. There are two ways in which congregations sometimes display this niggardliness. (1.) In their shabby contributions to their minister during the days of his activity. They take all they can get from him, and give as little as possible in return. (2.) In their miserable provision for him in the days of his infirmity and old age. Can anything be more heartless than the pittance on which he is often left to starve? The pretext of leaving him to be repaid at the resurrection, as in the case of Evans, is a barefaced hypocrisy, which must be utterly abominable to God.

There is a third way of evading this duty I want the Christian public to look at. I have heard it myself. It is this: Ministers should not be rich! I am not seeking to make ministers rich. I have no ambition to be rich. But it is a sweet thing to be able to pour blessings into an empty cup; and I want to know why I should be deprived of that pleasure more than others? Have not I a heart as well as other men? Have not I pity as well as other men? Do not I delight in hearing and receiving the widow’s blessing as well as other men? More than that, I ask what reasons there are against ministers being rich which do not apply with equal, perhaps with greater, force to others? Who dare say that ministers would make a worse use of money than others? Are those who have received a liberal education, who hold a sacred office, who occupy a public position, whose piety should be fired at the altars where they minister, and whose sympathies are daily moved by the misery they see, - more likely than other men to make a bad use of money? Was Agur’s prayer, ‘“‘Give me neither poverty nor riches,” made only for them? I tell him who tells me that ministers should not be rich, that that prayer is as fit for his lips as for mine. Whether ministers are less likely to make a good and noble use of riches than others is a question which I answer by pointing to the Church of England. In her only do you find many men of private fortunes holding a holy office; and is it not a fact, one most. honorable to her clergy, that in building schools and paying teachers, in erecting churches and paying curates, in other benevolent and Christian agencies, a very large number of the ministers of the Church of England pay as much out of their private fortunes as they get annually from their livings? Show me the class — bankers, merchants, physicians, farmers — that does the like.

All Task is that ministers should have such a maintenance as shall relieve them from evils that I shall call poverty. Poverty in a good cause is a noble thing. Let none, therefore, stagger at the word; nor, in such a cause as ours, at the thing. I have no sympathy with the man who quarrelled with the word oor in the inscription proposed for Mr. Pitt’s monument; which was something to this effect — that millions had passed through his hands, and that he died poor. The noblest thing ever said about a statesman! But this gentleman, of very squeamish sensibility, said, “‘Oh, I don’t like that word poor. Should it not be, that though millions had passed through his hands, he died in emdbarvassed circumstances?” Still poverty is an evil; and what I plead for is, that my brethren should have livings adequate to their position in society, and adequate to the expenses in which they are necessarily involved.

But there are worse evils behind than any I have yet exposed. The result of the inadequate livings of our ministers is, or, as sure as the tide will flow to-morrow, will be — unless the Christian people take steps to prevent it — that the rising talent and genius of our country will go to other professions; leaving the pulpit to weakness or fanaticism. That were an unspeakable calamity. I would hold out no lure to avarice, nor tempt any to enter the Church by the hope of wealth; but I wish no man to be deterred from it by the certainty of poverty. That stands as a barrier at this moment between the Church, and the higher and middle classes of

society; and I ask you to remove it. How many

noble, large-hearted, Christ-loving office-bearers.

have we in our Church! yet I wish to know how many of these gentlemen engaged in Glasgow in commerce, or in Edinburgh in the honorable pursuits of the law, or other learned professions, are at this moment training one son for the ministry? They give us their silver. I want their sons — a gift more precious than their silver. And why, but that the pulpits of the Church may present a fair representation of its position as well as of its piety? No man will suspect me of undervaluing the humble classes of the people. Who does, does me a cruel wrong. If I have lived for one thing more than another, it has been to rescue and raise the very poorest of the poor. I stand by the people, and believe the humbler classes in their religious and other views, to be sounder — take them all in all — than any other. Some of my most valued and best respected brethren, ornaments to this Church and to their country, have sprung from a humble origin; and should the Church of Christ lose the working classes, she loses, under God, her best support.

Nevertheless, to me it seems most important and

desirable that the ministry of the Church should -

represent the position as well as the piety of its membership; that there should be a fair proportion of what we call well-born and well-bred men in the ministry, to give it a tone removed from vulgarity, or that thing, still more offensive, called vulgar gentility. The humbler classes in our Church have indeed no reason to fear that the upper will betray their interests. The men that went out to the hillside in the days of the Covenant, and preached in the face of Claverhouse’s dragoons, were many, if not most of them, what are called ‘‘ well-born men.” The Erskines and Moncrieffs, the first seceders, were also men of family and position. Well, what I desire is, to see all classes in our pulpits — the piety, and genius, and talent of every class. But at this moment you cannot reckon on youths from the middle class coming forward to the ministry. Those who give their gold and silver to the treasury of the Church, are not giving their sons to its ministry. Such is the fact; account for it how you may. I for one am not astonished at it. Have not I heard ministers themselves say, that, having felt so keenly the poverty and difficulties of their position, the last profession they would rear a son to was the Church? I don’t sympathize with that. At the same time, I cannot greatly censure either them, or our laity. It is easy to understand how a devout man should say, ‘‘I am at liberty to consecrate myself to Christ and poverty; but am I at uberty, in the case of that boy who has given evidence of genius, and some promise of piety, and whom a turn of my hand, under God’s providence, may turn this way or that, — am I at liberty, at an age when he is not capable of fully judging for himself, to devote him to a life of privations, especially when he may serve the Lord in employments that involve no particular hardships?”

That is a grave question; nor can it be doubted that it is the poverty of ministers which keeps our intelligent and pious laymen from doing what I am anxious they should feel free to do — give their sons, the best and brightest of them, to the pulpit. I want this ‘stone of offence” removed. People talk with senseless horror of the bait of riches, the temptation of wealth; but let them think of this, that they do not get rid of the temptations of wealth by a mean and shabby stipend, — nothing of the kind. A living of £100 or £150 is as great a bait to a peasant’s son as one four times that amount were to the son of a manufacturer, or merchant, or lawyer, or physician. The only difference is, that if peuple are to be moved by mercenary influences to enter the ministry, with a low stipend you draw the whole of your clergy from the lower classes of the people. But that would prove no gain. Low livings, therefore, afford no security against men seeking to enter the ministry from low motives; indeed, in the only case recorded in Scripture where a man betook himself to the priest’s office from mercenary motives, the stipend was a very mean one — but ten shekels of silver, his meat, and a suit of clothes. What I plead for is such a provision, and only such a provision, for the ministers of religion as shall deliver them from the painful trials and narrow pinching circumstances under which many at this hour are secretly groaning.

Let me address the wealthy members of our Church — those who hesitate about giving their sons to the ministry, from a very natural dread of the privations which would be their doom. I say, “‘ You have the remedy in your own hands. I tell you kindly but plainly that you are without excuse.” I can well understand an affectionate and prudent father saying, “I may give my money, but am IJ at liberty to give my son, to the Lord; and so cast him without his full ccnsent on a sea of troubles?” But there is no occasion he should ever know the troubles you dread. You can insure him against them. Do not hundreds of wealthy and worldly men who send their sons into the army give them an allowance sufficient to save them from the poverty of their inadequate pay? and why should not our wealthy and Christian men do the same for sons in the ministry? There is the remedy as I have seen it in a will which bequeathed a large share to the son who, having entered the ministry, had embraced a profession the most sacred, but yet the worst paid. Ifa youth devotes himself to the ministry, willing to give himself to poverty for the cause of Christ, I say to the father, Let him have a Benjamin’s share; give him a double portion! Thus you can lay the ghost of poverty, and save your son from difficulties, and penury, and lifelong trials.

Another thing I venture to suggest. Why is it, I ask, that wealthy congregations do not give their ministers livings adequate to the position they occupy, and the expenses in which they are necessarily involved? The evil of small stipends throughout the Church is one it will take years to mend. But why do congregations which have numbers and wealth sufficient to provide their minister with an income such as his position requires, and his talents entitle him to, not do so? Why should talent and genius not insure the same measure of competency in the Church that they do in every other profession? Why should he who brings the richest gifts and graces to the highest office, be the only man so inadequately remunerated, that, when his coffin is paid, his family have nothing left, and an appeal must be made to the generosity of the public? I admire the generosity that answers the appeal, but would admire more the justice that rendered it unnecessary. I see that an elder in Glasgow has proposed that there should be three or four livings in Edinburgh, three or four in Glasgow, and elsewhere throughout the Church, up to the mark of £1,000. I amnotastonished at the proposal. It is every way wise. I can lay my hands on men in the Church who, if they had gone to the Bar, would have risen to the top of it; and not £500, but £5,000, or more, would have been their yearly income.

Under God, three grand powers are now moving the world, — the press, the platform, and the pulpit. I have no jealousy of the press or platform; but should they be allowed to monopolize the talent and genius of our country, it will be bad for the country, and bad for the Church of Christ. Alas for the day, when pulpits are proverbial for dulness, the Sabbath is a weariness, and the greatest of all professions has the smallest of men to fill it! When the power of moulding public opinion departs from the pulpit to pass to the press and platform, “the sceptre shall depart from Judah.” I call on people of every denomination to avert such a grave calamity, and beware how they starve the pulpit into weakness and contempt. Would to God that these words entered the hearts of pious parents, and enlisted for the ministry of the Gospel youths distinguished alike for genius and piety! Why should not our Christian youth come forward to embrace this noblest, though meanwhile poorest, of all professions? Some years ago, leaving titles, estates, luxurious mansions, kind fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and blooming brides, many threw themselves on the shores of the Black Sea, to face frost and famine, pestilence and iron showers of death, under the walls of Sebastopol! And shall piety blush before patriotism? Shall Jesus Christ call in vain for less costly sacrifices — either of money or of men? Let those whom Providence has enriched, some with silver and some with sons, remember the touching question one wrote beneath a figure of our Lord stretched bleeding on the cross, ‘‘ THIS THOU HAST DONE FOR ME, WHAT SHALL I DO FOR THEE?”

HIS GOVERNMENT.

Where a forest of masts rises along the docks of some great commercial seaport, or watched from the shores of the estuary by which, homeward or outward bound, they are perpetually passing, what a wonderful variety of vessels we see! the origin of all the fallen tree, or shapeless log, astride which man first ventured on the treacherous water. Some, hugging the land and creeping from port to port, are coasters of small burden; others, employed on long and distant voyages, float like leviathans on the deep, — their masts the tallest pines, their sails spread out to the gentle breeze, a cloud of snowy canvas: some bearing them to other countries or bringing them to ours, are laden with the fruits of peace; others, huge floating castles, are trod by combatants, and, with cannon looking grimly out at every porthole, are armed for war. Some are constructed ol wood, others of iron: some catching the wind in their wings move onward by help of sails, others, beating the water and leaving a foaming wake behind them, by the power of fire. But though, differing in size, form, material, purpose, or moving power, they are unlike in these respects, they are alike in this, each has a compass, an anchor, and ahelm. Possessed by all, these can be dispensed with by none; it being impossible otherwise to make a successful voyage or avoid shipwreck — their fate who find in their moving home a coffin, and in the sea a moving grave.

On turning to the shore, its inhabitants, whether they dwell in town or country, present a corresponding, and even greater, variety of classes. Be they rich or poor, sitting solitary or in families, crowded in busy towns or lonely shepherds in quiet uplands, dwelling in huts or palaces, parents or children, masters or servants, magistrates or subjects, princes or peasants, kings or commons, the sheep of Christ’s flock or its pastors, the Word of God is the one thing they have, or should have, in common — that book being as indispensable to them for a good life and a happy death, as compass, helm, and anchor to every ship that ventures on the sea. Divine in its origin, this wonderful and precious volume is so universal in its application, that none can say, ‘I have no need of thee!” Equally adapted to all classes, all countries, all times, all circumstances, all days of the week, all ages of the world, and all ages of human life, from the child, tottering by the side of a cradle to the old man tottering on the edge ofa grave, we cannot imagine a condition of life in which a man will not find instructions there to teach him how to fill it. There “‘in precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little,” all men may read the principles that should guide them — and these set forth so plainly that he whorunneth may read. But besides these, the finger-posts, as I may call them, that stand by the roadside to point the way, we have in Scripture characters — in this, that, and the other man — patterns to copy, living guides who go before us, saying, ‘‘ This is the way, walk ye in it.” In this, its universal aptitude and application, the Bible may be compared to the atmosphere, which, descending into the depths of the lowest valleys, and rising above the summits of the highest Alps, holds the whole world in its embraces; or to the great ocean, which washes every shore on earth, and encircles in its arms alike the largest continents and the tiniest rock that lifts its head out of the waste of waters.

No case affords a better illustration of this than that of Samuel — those who fill the highest positions in society, and all indeed who, whatever their position be, exercise authority over others, finding in him a living example of a ruler, and how to rule. Light of the cottage, the Word of God is of all books the best fitted to be the light of the palace also. I don’t know that it is; but by none should it be more frequently read, and more devoutly studied than by kings. So thought Dr. Coxe, Dean of Christ’s Church, Oxford, and tutor to the prince, afterwards Edward VI. Writing of hir pupil he says, “As concerning my lord and dei scholar, it is kindly done of you to desire so gently to hear from him and of his proceedings. We can now read, and, God be thanked, sufficiently. He understandeth and can frame well his three concords of grammar, and hath made already forty or fifty pretty Latin verses, and is now ready to enter into Cato, to some proper and profitable fables of fEsop, and other wholesome and godly lessons that shall be devised for him. Every day in the masstime he readeth a portion of Solomon’s Proverbs for the exercise of his reading, wherein he delighteth much; and learneth there how good it is to give ear unto discipline, to fear God, to keep God’s commandments, to beware of strange and wanton women, to be obedient to father and mother, to be thankful to him that telleth him of his faults.” Other books — the works of great men and possessed of great merit — have been written for the use of princes in training for a throne; but in preference to all such, were we a prince’s tutor, we should select the Bible; and for a pattern for rulers him whose name stands at the head of this chapter. America boasts her Washington; England her Hampden; Scotland her Wallace; Greece and Rome their patriots or patriot-kings; but among the few illustrious men whose deeds shine in the annals and whose names are embalmed in the heart of nations, where, in all history, sacred or profane, is there one so eminently fitted to rule as Samuel — -who presents such a remarkable combination of mental power, the purest patriotism, and the highest piety?

He was a patriotic ruler.

1. His object was not the possession of power — that for which so many kings and statesmen have had recourse to the meanest devices; have trodden the foulest paths; and, casting all honor to the winds, have abandoned the principles, and betrayed the friends of their life. How basely did Henry IV. desert the sacred cause for which, his white plume dancing in the thick of the fight, he had often led his followers to battle! And from him who embraced Popery to win Paris, and, with its gay capital, the kingdom and crown of France, to such as by bribery have purchased meaner offices, what sacrifices of conscience, and virtue, and truth, have been offered at the shrine of power! The crimes which some have committed to gain it have been without a parallel, unless those which others have committed to retain it. Unlike that grand old Roman who threw up the helm of the state and retired to plough his paternal acres, how many has the world seen clinging to power as a drowning man to a plank; and to retain possession of it, resorting to the most dishonorable and vilest means! For this purpose, once and again the sword of Joab was plunged into the heart of a rival; to prop up his throne, Charles I., in Strafford, gave the neck of a devoted friend to the headsman’s axe; to secure their places and appease an angry country, a British ministry cast an admiral of the fleet to the mob, and hanged him up before the sun; and Richelieu, a cardinal of the church, and chief minister of France, arranged that her armies should suffer an ignominious defeat — scrupling not, rather than that he should lose his place, that thousands of his gallant countrymen

should lose their lives, and cement with their blood the tottering fabric of his power. No man can have intelligently read the history of the past, or watched the events of his own day and the course of many who, amid its shifting scenes, have played their part on the stage of public life, without the painful conviction that there are few things in the world more rare than true patriotism; and few positions where a good man finds it more difficult to preserve his integrity than amid the temptations of politics and wiles of statesmanship. The arena there resembles more a sheet of ice than the compact, sandy floor on which the old Greeks and Romans met to fight for laurel crowns and victory. In the crooked policy they have pursued to gain or to retain place and power, what base things have great men done, and what bad things good men! — sometimes constraining us, as we read or hear of them, to ask, ‘‘ What is man?” or to exclaim with David, ‘‘ How are the mighty fallen; the weapons of war, how are they perished!”

A finer contrast to the general character of the princes and statesmen, and, whether they occupied a high or a low place, of the rulers of this world, we cannot imagine than that which Samuel presents. Place, honor, and power sought him; not he them. He became the judge of Israel, or its ruler, at the call of God; and when, without respect to his gray hairs and long years of honorable, successful service, an ungrateful country called him to resign his office, like the sun which looks largest at its setting, he never seems so great, so grand, as in the last scenes of his public life. It had been a sublime, though painful, spectacle to see this great man, wounded by ingratitude and smarting under

+ the stings of those he had nursed in his bosom, uncomplainingly, simply, cheerfully lay down his office. He did more than that. Remonstrating with the people, he warned them of the evils a king would bring in his train; and thereby exposed himself to unjust suspicions, and the foul tongues of many who would represent him as clinging to the possession of power rather than seeking the good of his country. And when Saul at length “was fixed on as his successor, see how noble he bore himself to the man who was to thrust him from his seat! There is no more magnanimous thing in history. Rising above the weaknesses of our nature, he received Saul with the utmost courtesy, and treated him even with paternal kindness. Casting at him no jealous eye, far less the deadly javelin he cast at David, Samuel resigned the sceptre with more than the dignity of a king, and all the self-denial of a Christian. Like a father who instructs a beloved child, he counselled, he advised, he warned him; and leaving worldly rivals to thwart rather than help their successors, to rejoice over their errors rather than lament them, he clung to Saul. He supported his authority so long as he could; and when at length the sins of his successor parted them forever, Samuel ‘retired sad and sorrowful to his home in Ramah. Unlike those statesmen who are driven from place only to brood over their wrongs, and stir up the people to recall them, he lamented the errors and bewailed the fate of him to make way for whom he himself had been thrust from power and honor. I cannot fancy a nobler or more touching picture than this venerable, grand old man, who had been

3jo8. Ss STUDIES OF CHARACTER.

the safety and honor of the commonwealth, sitting in his house forgetting all his personal wrongs in grief for the public calamity, and allowing the evening of his days to be darkened with sorrow for the crimes and misfortunes of Saul. If ever breast was pure of selfish ambition and the love of power, it was his who exposed himself to this honorable reproach — to whom the Lord appeared, saying — ‘‘ How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him?” 2. His object was not his own personal aggrandizement. ‘ L’é¢at, cest moi” (‘The State, it is I”), said Louis XIV. to one who happened to speak in his presence of the interests of the State. A striking picture that of one who, though called “‘the great,” was an incarnation of the worst passions of human nature — of selfishness, pride, heartless cruelty, insatiable ambition, and abominable lust! — a truer picture, though drawn by his own hand, than any left by Bossuet, or Massillon, or the other flatterers of a bloody tyrant and ruthless persecutor of God’s heritage. What sacrifices have been offered at the feet of this idol, 1! To gratify the ambition, the avarice, the lust, the vengeance, -and the pride of kings, of ministers of state and other rulers, the interests of commerce and industry have been ruined; beautiful countries desolated; the liberties of mankind trodden under foot; nations impoverished; happy homes turned into smoking ruins, and peaceful fields into scenes of blood and slaughter. We meet with no such scenes under the rule of Samuel. We hear neither the wail of widows, nor the shout of battle, nor any prophet who wrings his hands, crying, ‘‘O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” Unlike those that had preceded, or were to follow, the sword slept in its scabbard all the days of Samuel — that great battle excepted which inaugurated his reign, and was won by his prayers. Happy days, these, for Israel, when, each man sitting at his cottage door, under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to make him afraid, the people rested from arms; enjoying in their homes the security, and reaping in their fields the fruits, ot peace!

Under his government — Samuel himself the highest example of it — piety flourished; the stream of justice ran pure; the rights of all classes were respected; private property was safe; and the public burdens, pressing lightly, were easily borne by a prosperous people. No taxes to carry on such wars as David’s, or maintain the costly splendor of Solomon’s reign, were imposed on the nation. Saul was perpetually fighting; in the extension of his kingdom, or the suppression of intestine commotions, the sword was seldom out of David’s hand; while, through the boundless expenses of Solomon’s harem, and royal parade, and public buildings, and voluptuous as well as refined indulgences, the peace of his reign must have proved more burdensome to the country than the wars of his predecessors: and I can fancy, when old men described the happy and quiet life they led in the good days of Samuel, how many felt that when their fathers clamored for a king, on that occasion, as old Bishop Latimer said of another, the vox populi was rather the vox diaboli than the vox Dei — the voice of the devil than the voice of God.

A rare example of such virtues, in these days especially, Samuel’s hands, I remark also, were as clear of bribes as of blood. The public good his only object, he neither aimed at political ascendeicy nor pecuniary aggrandizement. Neither animated with the love of power, nor, like Herod of worms, eaten up with the love of money, he made no use of the opportunities his office afforded to enrich himself; and very probably retired from his post a poorer man than he entered on it. Though not culpable by indulging them like Eli, yet, like Eli and David, and other good men, unhappy in his sons, he had bitter cause to regret their bad behavior; but had this to alleviate his sorrow, that he had a them no bad example. A practice too common then, and still, in eastern countries, and apt to be followed wherever men holding offices of trust are inadequately rewarded, Samuel’s sons, whom, in his old age, he had associated with himself in the government of the country, resorted to dishonorable and dishonest means. They took bribes of suitors, and sold justice for money. But his own hands were clean. No stain tarnished the brightness of the old man’s name; nor, though feeling, no doubt, all the partialities of a father for his children, did he attempt to palliate their crimes, or screen them from public indignation. Walking in his integrity; fearing God, but no man’s face; upright; the soul of honor; his bosom glowing with the purest patriotism, ee grand is his last appearance on the stage of public life ! — grander far than all the pomp and lustre which, amid the blaze of beauty, the blare of trumpets, and the roar of cannon, surrounds the coronation of a king. The sun never looked down on a more touching and impressive spectacle. With Saul, their anointed king, towering head and shoulders, in royal vestments, above the crowd of nobles, the tribes of Israel are met; and Samuel, bent with age and dismissed from office, is there to meet them. Conscious of rectitude, nor fearing the face of any man, he comes to challenge them. They had rejected him; he is there to ask them what grounds they had for doing so. Treated as one who had betrayed his trust, he calls on them to allege it openly if they dare, and to prove it if they could. Long years of service, now forgotten, they had repaid with base ingratitude; and he is here, old and gray-headed, to ask them what he had done to suffer such an ignominious fate. Not that he had clung to office; or, mortified at the change, would retire into private life to pass the evening of his days in regrets at the loss of power and popularity — by no means. But he had his own character, and that of religion also, to vindicate; and still aiming, even when he stood on his defence, at the public good, he had to teach his successor with what integrity to live and for what ends to rule. So coming to the front — to touch surely the hearts of many, as he stood with his hoary head and venerable form beneath the heavens of that God he had served so long and well, and face to face with a people whose ingratitude to him could not quench his love for them — he spoke out this lofty and noble appeal: “I am old and gray-headed, and I have walked

before you from my childhood unto this day. Behold, here I am; witness against me before the Lord and before his anointed: Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind my eyes therewith? and I will restore it you. The Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day that ye have not found aught in my hand!” And thus, with a dignity which nothing could surpass, he retired from public life amid, I trust, the tears and acclamations of the vast assembly — in point of lofty, unselfish, high-minded patriotism, the model of a ruler.

Samuel was a fzous, as well as patriotic, ruler.

In wandering among the old houses of a picturesque and ancient capital one meets with curious vestiges of other days — ofa time when these abodes, now abandoned to squalor and poverty, were gay with fair ladies, and plumed nobles, and belted knights, all long forgotten and mouldered to dust. Amid the pensive thoughts which the contrast between the present and the past, the scenes before our eyes and those which fancy calls up, suggests, it is a relief to find here and there something better than the vestiges of departed grandeur — evidences of piety clinging to these dingy tenements, like the wallflowers that impart beauty and fragrance to the stones of an old ruin. These are the inscriptions which our forefathers carved on the lintels of their doors, where, in Greek, or Latin, or English, in plain or old black letter, the passenger may still read, though defaced by the teeth of time, such texts as these — ‘‘ Fear God and honor the king. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it;’ ‘The Lord is my Shepherd; I] shall not want;” ‘‘ The Lord is my refuge and my fortress; in Him will I trust.”. Thereby, while we consecrate our churches, some in one, some in another, fashion — they seem to have consecrated their very houses to God: declaring to ail men that their rule was to be his law, and their resolution that of his servant Joshua — ‘‘ As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Thus I interpret the handwriting on the wall, the voice of its stones. And similar are the voices of those old chapels which hold the dust of kings, and often form the most interesting parts of the ruined and roofless palaces where once they held their courts. It would appear that in the rudest times of old an altar always rose near the throne; and that an indispensable part of every palace, was the chapel, where he to whom others knelt, knelt to God; and learned to remember that there was One above him whose throne overshadowed his; at whose mercy-seat kings had to seek for mercy; whose laws were to form the rule, and his glory the chief end of their government. It might be forgotten, nor may now once suggest itself to those who visit these scenes merely to gratify an antiquarian taste or an idle curiosity, but such customs had a pious origin; and it might teach us to approach these silent ruins with reverential feet, to think that if the woed out of the timber, and the stone out of the wall, were to speak, it would be in the words of Scripture, The name of that place shall be, The Lord is there!

Simply the vicegerent of God, and no king, Samuel had no palace in Israel; the palace, if such it could be called, was the tabernacle, where God dwelt within the curtains of the holy place. No armed guards protected the person, nor gorgeous retinue attended the steps of Samuel. No pomp of royalty disturbed the simple manner of his life, or distinguished him from other men; yet there rose by his house in Ramah that which proclaimed to all the land the personal character of its ruler,

and the principles on which he was to conduct his

government. In away not to be mistaken, Samuel associated the throne with the altar; earthly power with piety; the good of the country with the glory of God. ‘He judged Israel,” it is said, ‘‘all the days of his life, and went from year to year in Circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all these places; and his return was to Ramah, for there was his house, and there he judged Israel, and there,”-it is added, ‘‘ ke dbuzlt an altar unto the Lord.” That altar had a voice no man could mistake. In a manner more expressive than proclamation made by the voice of royal heralds with painted tabards and sounding trumpets, it proclaimed to the tribes of Israel that piety was to be the character, and the will of God the rule, of his government.

Happy the land which had its councils guided, and its borders defended, and even its battles won, by the prayers and piety of its ruler. Such a land was Israel in the days of Samuel. There was, indeed, but one battle fought during the whole course of his government; and his prayers won it. The field was the same as that on the disastrous day when the ark of God was taken, and “Ichabod, the glory is departed,” was written on the banners of Israel. The field was the same and the foe the

~.™ same, but how different the issue! The story recalls the day when, with Aaron supporting one arm and Hur the other, Moses sat on a hill apart, overlooking the combat; and with his hands and prayers so turning, this or that way, the bloody tide of battle, that Amalek prevailed when these fell down, and Israel when they rose again to heaven. In terror of the Philistines, who had come up like a flood on their land, the people, trusting less to their own arms than to Samuel’s power with God, repaired to him, saying, ‘Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us.” Commonly, when danger overhangs a land, the ruler proclaims a fast, and calls on his people for their prayers; but here — rare occurrence, and remarkable testimony to Samuel’s piety — the people implore their ruler’s prayers. Happy the land where religion has its choicest abode in the palace, saying, “‘ This is my rest; here will I dwell!” Happy the land where the hands that wield the sceptre have power with God; and its inhabitants believe that with their ruler on his knees they shall have Heaven on their side.

So it fell out with Israel in the days of Samuel. On the eve of battle, ‘‘ he took,” we are told, ‘a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord, and cried unto the Lord for Israel, and the Lord heard him.” The moment was that of the Philistines drawing near to battle; and the result was this, that they found Samuel on his knees more formidable than a bannered host. He prays; and suddenly his voice is drowned in the roar of elements. God himself descends into the fight; and the tribes that had come up to battle

—to slay and be slain — ha! nothing to do but. slay; to hang on the broken ranks of their enemies — pursue and kill them. ‘The Lord thundered with a great thunder on the Philistines, and discomfited them,” says the inspired historian; ‘‘and they were smitten before Israel.” Such good, though bloody, work did prayers and piety achieve that day; and for long ages afterwards, in the very field that was once the scene of a disastrous defeat, a great gray stone stood up, a monument. of a divine deliverance, and of a victory won by the prayers of him who raised it there — calling the name of it Ebenezer, saying, ‘‘ Hitherto hath the Lord helped us!”

Unlike those days the hues of whose bright and gorgeous dawn are succeeded by a gloomy change, - — clouds that, gathering like foes around him, close in upon the sun, and spread, and thicken, and burst out at length into lashing rain and roaring tempest, making the day, down to its close, belie all the promises of the morning, — the close, and indeed the whole course of Samuel’s public life, were in beautiful harmony with its commencement. He fulfilled all a fond and pious mother’s hopes. He disappointed none. God was the centre around which he, as well as heaven, turned. In all his difficulties he repaired to God for counsel. The laws which governed his acts as a statesman and his decisions as a judge were those of God’s Word; and, unlike this world’s statesmen, never turned aside by considerations of expediency, of this or that present advantage, he steered his course by those principles of eternal truth and justice which give consistency to conduct; because fixed as the pole star that, changing neither with seasons nor circumstances, abides immovable in the sky — sure guide of the mariner, both in calm and tempest, along the rocky shore and out on the open sea. Some men die better than they live. England’s great dramatist says of one who made a good end, that “nothing in life became him so much as the leaving it.” But more may be said of Samuel’s career — its close was not better, but in perfect harmony with its whole course. How inspired, with the loftiest piety and the purest patriotism, is the farewell oration he addressed to Saul and the assembled tribes ere the curtain fell, and he bade a last adieu to office and earthly power: ‘“‘ Turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: because it hath pleased the Lord to make you his people. Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way; only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things He hath done for you. But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both you and your king.”

What an example Samuel presents to our magistrates, our judges, our members of parliament — to all entrusted with authority, from the Queen to the humblest parent whose kingdom is the narrow walls of a household: and how should all who love their God and country pray that every post of honor and of public trust may be filled with a man of the type of Samuel! The fear of man bringeth a snare; but who, like Samuel, has the fear of God is raised above it. The favor of God is life; and who, like Samuel, seeks it will not be drawn aside by that of man. God is the judge of all, both of the quick and of the dead; and who, like Samuel, carries a sense of that to the bench of justice will keep the ermine of his robes unstained, and give righteous judgment; who, like Samuel, takes the word of God for his rule, and looks to the recompense of reward, may meet with the ingratitude, but will never betray the interests of the crown or of his country. I put unlimited confidence, indeed, in ho man — ‘‘How have the mighty fallen; and the weapons of war, how have they perished!” But I put little confidence of any kind in that man, whatever his office be, who has not the fear of God before his eyes, and higher motives of action than belong to earth and end with time. Religion is the root of honor; piety the only true foundation of patriotism; and the best defence of a country,. a people nursed up in godliness — of such virtue, energy, and high morale, that, animated with a ‘courage which raises them above the fear of death, they may be exterminated, but cannot be subdued. ‘It is not, as some allege, our blood, with its happy mixture of Celtic, Saxon, and Scandinavian elements, but the religion of our island — our Bibles, our schools, our Sabbaths, our churches, and our Christian homes — which, more than any and than all things else, has formed the character of its inhabitants; and to that more than to the genius of its statesmen, or to its fleets and armies, Britain owes her unexampled prosperity, and the peace that has brooded for a hundred years unbroken on her sea-girt shores, Let us be grateful for this; and resolved

SAMUEL THE RULER, “Io

to regard the ae of God — our religion — as the palladium of our country; let us devoutly recognize in its happy fortunes the same providence as marked, and rewarded, the pious rule of Samuel; of which this notable circumstance is recorded, ‘‘ SO THE PHILIS-TINES WERE SUBDUED, AND THEY CAME NO MORE INTO THE COAST OF ISRAEL; AND THE HAND OF THE LORD WAS AGAINST THE PHILIS-TINES ALL THE DAYS OF SAMUEL.”

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