The Same Subject Continued

I add a thought more. It may present a vivid impression of the power of the pulpit, to suppose it actually abolished throughout the world. What if the dream of some modern reformers could be realized, and the expressed wishes of a well-known class of men among us were gratified; and every minister in God’s Zion were silenced, and exiled, and every sanctuary in Christendom razed to its foundation! Can any one doubt, if this reckless experiment were fully made, that the moral, the social, the civil condition of the world would be melancholy to the last degree? What an immensity of wickedness would be found to exist among men! What “mighty labor of human depravity!” and what a stupendous amount of crimes!

Nor is this altogether hypothesis; for we have several classes of facts to go upon in our illustration of this idea. Take, for example, several instances in the history of Papal kingdoms, where they have been placed under interdict by the reigning Pope. When, in the thirteenth century, King John of England had incurred the displeasure of Pope Innocent III., and his kingdom was laid under interdict; when Otho, the Emperor of Germany, was for a similar cause, put under interdict by the same Pope; the result was calamitous beyond the endurance of the people. So it was, when Philip the Fair, of France, became involved in a quarrel with his Holiness, and was laid under interdict by Pope Boniface IX.; and when in the fourteenth century, Pope Clement V. dispatched a nuncio to Venice, and on the rejection of his demands, excommunicated the Doge, and put his dominions under interdict. The immediate effect of this sentence, as you well know, was, that every church in these kingdoms was closed; every priest forbidden to exercise his office; and all religious services of every kind indefinitely suspended. The Sabbath bell was unhung: the voice of prayer and praise was heard only in retirement; the living teacher spoke not; baptism was denied to the newly born, religious consolation to the dying, and Christian burial to the dead. The clergy avoided the land groaning under the malediction of the Pope; the people were excited against their own princes, because they were so slow to become reconciled to Rome. Conspiracy sprung up after conspiracy, till the ruling powers were constrained to submission to the Papal authority, through the fear of open insurrection. In some of these instances, the distress of the people is described as verging on madness; — it was the madness of despair, because their religious privileges were denied them. Have them they would, even at the expense of revolt and massacre.

Let us suppose such a state of things realized among Protestants, and that the countries of England or Scotland, or the United States, were placed under the ban of some governmental interdict, and their ministers banished, and their churches closed. The time was when this supposition was in part realized, even in Protestant England, and by the barbarous “Act of Uniformity,” in the year 1662, under the reign of the treacherous Charles II. And as the fatal day of St. Bartholomew approached, when the non-conformist ministers were to relinquish their pulpits, or sign articles which they could not in conscience subscribe to, two tliousmid pulpits were put under interdict, and two thousand of God’s faithful servants were virtually driven into exile. Prelacy triumphed for a while, as her elder sister had done before her; and such men as Calamy and Baxter, Manton, Bates, and Mead, instead of resisting unto blood, wept in silence. It was a dark day in England. There was great mourning. The land mourned “every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; and the family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart! All the families that remained, every family apart, and their wives apart.”

There was another scene of this same kind, though of more terrific aspect. During the reign of Louis XIV. of France, the spirit of persecution against Protestants, and especially Protestant ministers, was extended to such unrelenting severity, that on the revocation of the Edict of Nantz, the Protestant pulpit was annihilated, and its ministers slain and mutilated, with every species of barbarity. It was the jubilee of Rome; but it was the funeral-day of the people of God, No, it was not their funeral-day; for so many of them died without burial, that the inhabitants of some cities were obliged to remove from them to an atmosphere less corrupted by the bodies of the slain. Those who could escape tlijs scene of horror fled; they fled to other lands. Two hundred tlbousand of them fled; and not a few of the descendants of these noble men are here among ourselves, where the sword of persecution does not smite them, and where they perish not by “a famine of the word of the Lord.”

There is a still more affecting exemplification of the truth Ave are illustrating, and one that is fresh in the memory of some who are living. The writer of these pages remembers it well, when in the days of his childhood, the church bell of his native parish tolled for the downfall of Christianity in France. By one sweeping and atheistic law, the French people decided that there was no God. Her pulpits were silenced. Papal and Protestant. God’s day of holy rest was annihilated, and the Decade instituted in its room. And what was the consequence? Instructive, beyond exaggeration, instructive, to a degree which language is too poor to express. Subsequent events tell what it was. The guillotine proclaims it. The murderous band stationed at the prison doors proclaims it. A voice from one vast slaughter-house of men proclaims it. France herself, infatuated as she was, could not endure the destitution. Infidelity could not endure it. Atheism staggered and fell under the weight of its own wickedness. Every thing human tottered, because every thing perished that was divine. Infidelity, atheism, and France, were obliged to fall back upon institutions which they had scorned, seek the law at the lips of God’s ministers, and at altars Avhicli they had so shamelessly desecrated and profaned.

But let us return to the fiction of our hypothesis. What if the pulpits of this land were put under Papal interdict? What if some cruel and tyrannical “Act of Uniformity” were to exile even two thousand of her ministers? What if Papacy should procure a revocation of the charter ‘that gives liberty of conscience, and speech, and preaching? or Atheism should pass a resolution that there is no God, and should close our churches, and bid us all speak no more in his name? Tell me, ye who rail so eloquently at God’s ministers, have you any expedient to supply the chasm? What fountains of life have you to open in the desert, and wdiat trees of righteousness to plant in the parched wilderness? Drain it of these waters, if you will; burn it over, if you will; %nd then bear in mind that on you rests the responsibility of reclaiming it. Piety sickens at such a view; humanity weeps over it. Such a land were a deliled inheritance, “given to salt, and that cannot be healed.” Let infidelity ever become so rife among us, and so rampant as to disrobe our ministry, and close our churches; and whatever else might be the result, proof would not be wanting that moral X)0wer had been withdrawn from the land. Let her pulpits be closed for a quarter of a century, and the result cannot be doubtful. More practical evil would flow from such a destitution, than from all other causes put together. Law would vanish with religion. No corrupt propensity would be kept under restraint; there would be no corrective, and no limit but selfishness to the depravity of the human heart. The virtuous would be driven to despair, and the vicious to the darkness and crimes of paganism. It would be a Pagan land, dark and dreary as though the Sun of righteousness had never risen upon it. Owls would dwell there, and satyrs would dance there; and around such a dreadful cavern of iniquity, the dragons of the pit would linger and dwell as in their own habitation. And the curse of God would be upon it, as it was upon Sodom; and he would extirpate the inhabitants of it as he did the nations of Canaan. His judgments would go forth against it, and as though seven thunders uttered their voices, it would be said in heaven, woe, woe, woe to the land that is

NOT THE LAND OF SABBATHS, AND CHURCHES, AND ministers!”

We may not extend these illustrations. The pulpit speaks for itself. There it stands, nor is it possible to escape its influence. Men must not only go out of the sanctuary, but exile themselves from Christian lands, if they would avoid its influence. Many are the springs of thought which it sets in motion, not only in the bosoms of those who seek its instructions, but of those who never come within hearing of the preacher’s voice. The mightiest are no more exempt from it than llic meanest, the most hostile than the most friendly. Everywhere its power is felt; it acts on them for eternity.

Yes, it acts on them for eternity! The years are short and few. Soon will it be known whether it has been to them a savor of death unto death, or a savor of life unto life; whether the seed it scatters has found no conjrenial soil, and has become petrilied to adamant, or whether it has taken root and struck deep, because it is nourished by the waters of the sanctuary.

Different, widely diff’erent, will be the reflections of these two diff’erent classes of persons as they look back upon the pulpit, — the one from the bright, the other from the dark abodes of the eternal world.

That pidpit, with what emotions of bitterness will it be remembered by the millions of the lost! “That sanctuary and that man of God,” will many a reprobate in the prison of despair exclaim, “forewarned me of this dreadful immortality, but I heeded not the admonition. That sacred desk told me of redemption through the blood of Jaus; but I scorned the message, and trod that blood of the covenant under my feet. I might have been happy on the same gracious and condescending terms with those I now see at God’s right hand; but I would not come to Christ that I might have life! And now I am lost — lost — lost! O how dreadful this eternal hell! That pulpit, O that pulpit! how it aggravates my woes! Why did it speak to me at all, if only thus to add fuel to these flames!”

On the other hand, there will be those, and “a great multitude, which no man can number,” who will remember the influence of the pulpit with grateful and adoring praise to Him, who “through the foolishness of preaching saves them that believe.” That house of God, how many will remember it in heaven! “That pulpit, which looked upon me when I was a child, which taught me when I was ignorant, and reclaimed me when I was a wanderer; which reminded me of my wickedness, and told me all things that ever I did; which spake to me of my immortality, and made me tremble and made me weep; never can it be blotted from memory. That pulpit, which told me of a Saviour’s love, and how he bled, and died, and waited to long-suff’ering, that I might accept his saving mercy; which comforted me when I was cast down, and cheered me in my fatigue; which dissipated my delusions, and helped me to escape the snare of the fowler; which dispensed to me the bread of life when I was hungry, and when I was thirsty gave me the waters of salvation; which brought its messages of peace to my bed of languishing, soothed my aching head, and when I was dying, told mc not to let my heart be troubled:” — That jmlpit, may millions now in glory say, “warned me of yonder iiery prison, and directed me to these mansions in my Father’s house!”