The Same Subject Continued

But there is a different thought from any of those to which our attention has been thus far directed. In aiming at the great and single object the pulpit has in view, it gains other things; things which it does not so directly aim at, but which belong to it as its natural allies, which are incide7ital to it, and follow in its train of influences and blessings.

The mere fact that it has a ready and almost constant access to the minds of the people, is itself an index of its power. “To the poor the Gospel is preached.” The pulpit is a popular and democratic institution, fitted to protect the rights of all classes of men, and to diffuse a universal spirit of industry, virtue, kindness, and peace. In the organization of human society, it is the only official bond between the aristocracy and democracy of the Christian world. Its sphere of influence lies first and chiefly with the middle and lower classes; nor is there one of the institutions which are designed to make them better and more useful men, but may be traced to the pulpit as its founder. I am ashamed that, in one respect, the corrupt Church of Rome reads an affecting lesson to Protestants; and it is in their solicitude to bring the poor to the house of God. There are no churches for the rich in Papal lands; this is an expedient of Protestantism, and a modern refmement upon that Christianity which teaches that “the poor ye have always with you.’’ “The rich and the poor meet together: the Lord is the Maker of them all.” So it ought to be, and so it will be, in every prosperous church. These select churches ought all to have died with lukewarm Laodicea. In other spheres we look for distinctions among men; Christianity looks for them; but not in the Church of God. The pulpit is the great spiritual leveller, because it is the expositor of a common Christianity; a Christianity that is “no respecter of persons;” a Christianity that swallows up all that is adventitious in the mortal, in his immortality: This is one department where it performs its appropriate functions. The difference in the social institutions in Pagan and Christian lands, in the attachments, virtues, characters, and thousand agencies in domestic and public life, cannot be accounted for without its influence.

It has also truths and obligations, and a benevolence, and n morality addressed to the higher classes. Its voice has been often heard on subjects of high public interest. Its influence has been felt in scenes which “tried men’s souls,” and amid revolutions which have alternately jeoparded and advanced the well-being of the world. But whether they have been for good or for evil; whether they have been religious, or civil, or of a mixed character; the influence of the pulpit has been felt in them all. That great event in the history of the world, the American Revolution, never would have been achieved without the influence of the pulpit. Political society “moved on the axis of religion.” The religious movement gave its character to the social movement. Men who knew there was a “Church without a Bishop,” knew also there could be a “State without a King.” Had the pulpits of New England and the Presbyterian Church, occupied the same position on this question which was occupied by so many of the pulpits which I could name, we should have been colonies still.

Nor does this event stand alone as exemplifying the power of the pulpit in affairs not purely religious. The religion of a nation is not only one of the elements of its existence, but the varied modifications of that religion affect every part of it, and give it its character. We are at some loss for a selection of facts to illustrate this remark, because tlicy crowd upon us from every quarter. Take the following as examples. Few measures have exerted a greater influence upon national character, than the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer, of the Church of England — the Solemn League and Covenajit, of the Church and people of Scotland — the Augshiirgh Confession — the League of the Protestant Princes ofSmalhalde — the Westininster Confession of Faith — the Articles of the Synod of Dort — and the Cambridge and Sayhrook Platform. Yet were all these either the subject matter of legislative provision and enactment, or ratified in assemblies in which the Princes of the Empire were present. The influence of the pulpit was felt in them all. There is a young republic which has sprung into being in our times, on the shores of Africa; and on its deep foundations are the names of Hopkins, Mills, Finley, and Ashmun — names not soon forgotten in the history of the American pulpit.

There is one department where this incidental influence of the pulpit ever has been acknowledged; I mean that of learning and science. In the Hebrew state, its religious teachers were the chief depositaries of its literature. Men like Moses and Samuel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Isaiah and Daniel, as well as the Scribes and Pharisees, and Rabbins of later

THE POWER OF THE PULPIT. g|

times, could not long dwell among an uncouth and ignorant people. The standard writers upon Jewish antiquities lead us to conclude that the cities of the Levites were seats of learning, and that the schools of the Prophets were not unlike the schools of Grecian philosophy, where the young men associated with their teachers, and were qualified to be the teachers of the nation. The Jewish priests are declared to have been set apart to their office, that they “might teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.” They must have been men of no inconsiderable learning in order to have performed this service. If it is a fair supposition that the Jewish priesthood understood their own religious laws, as well as they were understood by Witsus, Waberton, Graves, and Michaelis, they must have exerted no humble influence on the literature of this people.

There are strong sympathies, and a most natural alliance, between religion and learning, — Christianity and every department of human science. In the brightest periods of the church and of literature, this alliance has been seen and felt. It cannot be otherwise than that a class of men, to whom is committed the religious instruction of the people, should exert an influence upon their literature, if it were only in liberating the mind from bondage, imparting an impression of personal responsibility, and stimulating to intellectual eflbrt. Every competent teacher of a Sabbath school knows that the alliance of which we are speaking, is the most natural thine: in the world. Were the Bible made a text-book in our common schools, our academies and colleges, as this book of God ought to be in every one of them; there is no department which, from the varied learning it requires, it would be so difficult to supply with an accomplished professor; nor is there one in. which so much general information of every kind might be communicated. The Yaeve facts recorded in the sacred waitings require extensive research, in almost every department of human knowledge. Chronology, history, the natural sciences, the science of law and government, and political economy, to say nothing of the laws of language, are important auxiliaries to just and enlarged views of the divine oracles. Nowdiere is there a finer field for such researches than in the five books of Moses, the geater Prophets, and the Acts of the Apostles. The book of Genesis alone is the source of all knowledge. It is a mountain where lofty cedars, the cedars of God, strike their roots deep; in whose recesses there is golden ore; on whose surface there is a wilderness of native flowers and fruit; through whose ravines run mig-hty rivers, and where ancient nations dwelt that were many and strong. Men of learning have traversed it; imagination has culled its purest flowers; curious research has traced out its time-worn channels; and patient and discriminating toil has dug- about its roots; and they are all found fresh and pure, and the soil inexhaustible.

It is no presumption to say that human learning is under obligations to the pulpit. To say nothing of the present age, what a host of names has it furnished, in days past, that are inscribed on the temple of learning and science, throughout the Continent of Europe and the British islands! It were a chasm to be felt, were the pulpit no longer to have a place in the University of the literary world.

These and other incidental influences of the pulpit are so obvious, that it is a fact which deserves to be noticed, that historians have found in impracticable to separate the profane from the sacred. Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, Sully, could not give an impartial account of the civil without presenting the ecclesiastical. Oral traditions, historical poems, laws, archives of state, monuments, coins, medals, books of heraldry and sepulchral stones, are not more important sources of history than the pulpit. That were a lame history of France, in which the names of Petavius, Beza, Lorraine, Bossuet, and Pascal had no place. And what would be the history of Germany, where the reader did not find tlic j)ortrails of Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer? Who that desired to do justice to his theme, would write the history of England, and suppress the deeds of WicklifTe, Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, Jewel, Leighton, and Baxter? Or what scholar would give to the world a history of Scotland, and keep out of sight such men as Patrick Hamilton, Wishart, Knox, Henderson, Gillespie, and Rutherford? Or who would risk his reputation as the historian of New England, without recurring to the name of Robertson, and the pulpits of Hooker, Davenport, Cotton, and Mather? Or where shall we look for any valuable historical sketch of the Middle States, without being introduced into the “Log College,” and to such men as Tennet, Blair, Burr, Dickenson, and Davies?

We may not pursue this prolific thought. It would be a pleasant service to us to enter into some specifications, and direct the attention of the reader, with more minuteness, to several portions of the Christian world, where the pulpit has exerted this incidental influence. We may perhaps be allowed to direct his attention to the little state of New Jersey, and to the states of New England. Look at Niew Jersey. What a beautiful commonwealth spreads itself between the bay of New York and the Delaware bay and river! Christian seminaries of learning, a Christian bench and bar, a Christian legislature, a Christian pulpit, — what an adornment to the land! My own preferences for New England, as one of her native sons, may be supposed to disqualify me to speak impartially of that fair land; but I will use the language of one who has never been accused of any such partialities.* “Two centuries have elapsed,” says this well known and able writer, “since the first persecuted settlers of New England set their feet on these shores, to rear a church in all the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. The population of that section of country has increased from a few individuals to eighteen hundred thousand, and there is now one minister to every thousand souls; a proportion greater than in some of the oldest countries of Europe; and there is doubtless no equal “population %ipon earth to w hom the Gospel is administered with greater purity and fidelity.” What would New England have been without her pulpit? With it, what is she, and where is not her influence felt? not simply in her own civil organizations, but in those of other states of this Union. There is no part of Christendom that has not acknowledged these incidental influences of the pulpit, in forming its habits and

* Introductory lecture delivered in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J., Nov. 1818, by Charles Hodge, D. D.

character, in elevatinir and purifyinp its institutions, in stimulating and extending its literature, in modifying its usages and laws, and in giving more or less of peculiarity to the measures and policy of its government. It necessarily gives a direction to the current of human thought, — men of talent, in every department of human life, feel its influence. It has been felt everywhere; — in the councils of warriors in the field, and of statesmen in the Senate-house. Kings on their thrones have listened to its voice, and the populace has been moved by it. Men of all religious persuasions, and of no religious persuasion, believers and infidels, feel its influence; all orders and combinations are, to a greater or less extent, subjected to its power. In past ages of the world, few moral causes did more in moulding the habits of human thought, than the various forms of the scholastic philosophy; but its powerful influence waned, and eventually was eclipsed by the Christian pulpit. Other influences there are which act upon the public mind; the press acts upon it; seminaries of learning act upon it; legislation acts upon it; courts of law act upon it; the theatre and the opera act upon it; the fine arts act upon it; and the exchange acts upon it; and all with prodigious power. Some of these are the immediate and direct antagonists of the pulpit; and its business is to oppose and neutralize them. Some of them are directly auxiliary to it, and some of them indirectly. As such, we honor them. But if we draw a line around any other department of human influence, and compare it with the pulpit, we must do the greater honor to this divine institution. It has no physical force to boast of; it is its moral power which is its glory. Its conflict is not the conflict of rushing bayonets, but of truth with error; nor are its victories those where men are trodden down and trampled on, but where they are lifted up. It has power above the field of battle, above the Forum, above the Senate-house. Yes, it has power above them all. Compare them. Inspect them. And then say which has the more important influence upon national character. Inspect them impartially; and whose sway is the widest, and which occupies the largest space? Who has accomplished most for this land, its warriors and its statesmen, or the ministers of the Gospel? Who most for England, Edmund Burke* and William Pitt,

* There is a fact in regard to Edmund Burke which ought to be remembered. In the years 1771 and 1772, during the reign of George III., an association was formed by some of the Clergy of the Established Church, and a few of the laity, for the purpose of substituting a declaration of assent to the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for the required subscription to the thirty-nine articles. From the place of their meeting, it was called the “Feathers Tavern Association.” When the petition was presented to the House of Commons, by Sir William Meredith, the brother-in-law of the unhappy Lord Ferrers, or Georce WIiiUK’Id aiul Robert Hall? Who for Scotland most, Robert Bruce and William Wallace, or John Knox and Thomas Chalmers? Mark this comparison between the most influential of secular men, and the more humble minister of Christ, and it is no difficult matter to see on which side the advantage lies. Look

the vote stood in favor of it seventy-one, and against it two hundred and seventeen.

The part which that distinguished statesman and ornament of the British Senate, Edmund Burke, acted on this occasion, is worthy of all praise. In the prospect of this discussion, he wrote to the Countess of Huntingdon, as follows:

‘• IMadam, — I am sensible your kindness and partiality to me will induce you to put the most favorable construction on my seeminoneglect of the communication which your ladyship did me the honor to address to me. Permit me to assure you that disregard and inattention to the contents of your letter, and the wishes of your ladyship, had not the smallest share in it. I honor and respect the great activity you have evinced on this occasion, and shall make it my study to merit the good opinion you entertain of me, which is so flattering to my feelings.

“It is with shame I find myself so late in answering a letter which gave me such sincere pleasure. I am happy in coinciding with your ladyship in attachment for the Established Church. I wish to see her walls raised on the foundation laid in the volume of divine truth, that she may crush the conspiracy of atheism, and those principles which will not leave to religion even a toleration. My sentiments in regard to the petition of the Clergy, praying to be relieved from subscription to the thirty-nine articles, are in opposition to the opinions of nearly all my own party. There is every probability of its beinothrown out; and you may rely on my determined opposition to it in every stage.

“I have the honor to be, madam, with the highest esteem and regard,

“Your ladyship’s most faithful and obedient humble servant,

“Edmund Burke.”

at them through the whole of their course, from the hegimiing to its close, and let their own lips utter the decision. There was an humble minister of Christ cradled in our native hills, who occupied hut twenty short years in preaching the Gospel of his Divine Master, who, as his term of service was about to close, said, “Oh, if ministers only saw the inconceivable glory that is before them, and the preciousness of Christ, they would not be able to refrain from going about, leaping and clapping their hands for joy*, and exclaiming, / am a minister of Christ! I am a minister of Christ /” Another distinguished individual there was, the contemporary of the one just spoken of, and in political life, the most distinguished of his age; — the sagacious counsellor of kings, and the companion and supporter of their thrones; — high in office during successive revolutions which overturned the government of his country, and changed the face of Europe; and more respected, and more feared than any diplomatist of his age -, — a man who was the origin and conductor of more and the most important negotiations, than any statesman who has lived; — sometimes a stanch republican, and sometimes jus divinum monarchist; oppressed with honors, and loaded with almost immeasured wealth, who left on his table the day previous to his deatJ!, the following lines: “Behold eighty-three years passed away! What cares! what agitations! what anxieties! what ill-will! what sad complications! And all without other result, except great fatigue of body and mind, a profound sentiment of discouragement of the future, and disgust of the past!” Which was the more important to the world, the pulpit of Portland, or the cabinet of the Bourbons? Who would not rather have been Edward Payson than Prince Talleyrand!