The Truth of Which the Pulpit Is the Vehicle

We have thus far simply illustrated the fact itself, that the pulpit has power.

From its divine origin, and from the benevolent ends it was designed to accomplish, it would be natural to conclude that the elements of its influence possess a fitness to their end, and that, in some respects, they are above every thing that is human. Our object is now to inquire, what are the constituent elements or THE POWER WITH WHICH IT IS THUS INVESTED?

While the pulpit possesses all that belongs to the province of moral suasion in its ordinary and best forms, it has peculiarities which the ordinary forms of moral suasion do not possess. There are principles, some of which, at least, account for the power it exerts, beyond that which is exerted by any other means of intellectual conviction, or any other moral influences that are knowi among men.

The first of these is the truth itself of which it is the vehicle.

The God of heaven is the God of truth; truth is infinitely dear to his pure and holy mind. He is its great assertor and guardian; nor will he he respected, loved, and oheyed, and this earth filled with his glory until it is flooded with his truth, as the waters cover the sea. The Scriptures instruct us, that truth is the great instrumentality by which his purposes of mercy are accomplished; the wisely selected means by which he operates; a means well adapted to the end; nay, the necessary and indispensable means; because truth alone presents the only objects of all that variety of right thoughts, and holy affections and emotions which constitute true religion. The pulpit has no other instrumentality. It has accomplished its vocation, when it has fully, clearly, and with a right spirit, exhibited the claims of truth. The factitious and artificial arrangements which have been so extensively relied on, are altogether foreign to its aims. Truth is that to which there is a response in the understanding and conscience; which convinces even where it does not persuade, and confounds where it does not control; and which, where it controls, becomes “the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation.”

There are other truths which have a different vehicle; they are truths which intellect honors, and to which an enlightened moral virtue does reverence; truth which, while it has its own appropriate sphere of influence, is an important auxiliary to the truth proclaimed from the pulpit.

There is no conflict between the truth of ‘God’s word and any other truth in the universe; rather is there a delightful harmony between this and all other truth; they form one beautifully compacted system, and all unite in proclaiming the perfection and giory of their great Author. The Author of nature is the Author of a supernatural revelation; he is the same Beins:, and o-overns the world with the same unerring wisdom in both these great departments. But while they thus confirm, illustrate, and adorn each other, they have not the same place, nor are they revealed for the same immediate purposes. The pulpit has objects of its own; it has a higher and more sacred vocation than natural science, or mere human learning. It is emphatically the truth of God’s written word which it utters, and which he has revealed for the salvation of men.

There is no error in truth; light is not more opposed to darkness, sweet to bitter, good to evil, than truth is opposed to error. Error has power, but it is to make men wicked and miserable. The empire of the great Adversary is founded in error; its first great principle was the first lie; and from that hour to the present, it has been extended and sustained by a succession of flagitious and impudent falsehood. The luiman mind is naturally under the direction of error. It is one of the evils to which sin has subjected the descendants of the first transgressor, that they “go astray from the womb, speaking lies.” Error is a sort of magnet, which attracts to it all wickedness; and such and so strong are the sympathies between them, that all the practical tendencies of the apostate mind invariably fall in with some form of error, in principle. Pulpits there are which are the teachers of error, and which make it their business to cast contempt upon all the great and distinguishing truths of the Gospel. — But they are not Christian pulpits; and by how much they have power, by so much do they derive it from the depraved and corrupt hearts of men, and from the Prince of error whom they serve. It is his cause in which they are employed.

There are Christian pulpits too which have an immingling of error with truth; but just in the measure in which this confusion exists, is the power of truth neutralized. Good is often done by such a ministry; but it is not because there is any amalgamation between truth and error; for they are dilTerent in their origin, their nature, and their effects. The chnfT is often severed from the wheat, even where they are both sown broad-cast. Where the mind and conscience are awake to the obligations of the Gospel, they are sometimes quick to discern the difference, and to cast the chaff away. It is not the error which such a defective ministry preaches that gives it power, but the little truth that is winnowed from the mass, by that Spirit “whose fan is in his hand.”

There must not unfrequently be controversy in the pulpit; the pulpit is the place where men who are “set for the defence of the Gospel” must “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” But in doing this, in doing it boldly and freely, and humbly too, there is something more to be done than refute error, and prostrate the adversaries of truth. Very little is accomplished merely by driving the enemy from his refuges of lies; he must be intrenched within the citadel of truth, and induced to flee to the strong-hold as a prisoner of hope. The sword that cuts him in pieces is not always the sword of the Spirit. The enemies of the Church of Rome found vigorous and formidable opponents in the pens of infidels; but this was nothing more than error contending with error; it was of comparatively little consequence which banner was victorious, for the conqueror was himself to be conquered. There were two men pfreatly dislinguislicd in tlic history of modern Europe, Avliose inlluence upon their fellow-men is felt to the present hour. Both began their career younn j both possessed superior powers of mind, and great moral courage; both were highly educated men, one in the severe Universities of Germany, the other in the more reiined University of Paris; and both well trained for the part they acted. Both were thrown upon the world in a period of great moral darkness; a period during which Europe had been long oppressed by the odious claims, the corrupt aristocracy, and the debasing institutions of the Papal Church, inwoven and inlaid in every department of human society, from the courts of princes, to the humblest domestic relations. Both also had the same immediate object — the emancipation of the human mind from the bondage of Rome. They were intensely exciting scenes into the midst of which these two remarkable men w ere introduced; for within the memory of the present and past generation, no events have taken place of greater importance than the great Protestant Reformation, and the memorable Revolution in France. But Luther and Voltaire were very diflerent men. The one W’as impelled by that atheistical and ruthless fanaticism which was the precursor of the “reign of terror;” the other by a firm belief and ardent love of the truth of God. Luther was actuated by the boldest, the most steady, the noblest and most unselfish motives and passions ever known to fallen humanity since the days of Paul; Voltaire too, was actuated by motives which were bold, active, persevering, but the most reckless and vile. Under equally strongimpulses, with the same sanguine expectations of success rousing, invigorating all their powers of body and mind, each pursued his own chosen and different way. And the difference was just this. Luther, anticipating momentous results from the controversy, controlled by the goodness, not simply of his proximate, but his ultimate object, and deeply sensible that it was much easier to pull down than to build up, and much more difficult to implant right principles than to eradicate wrong ones, took great pains to build up before he began to pull down. Voltaire, reckless of the future, deaf to every cool and benevolent consideration, — dead to every consideration but one, did nothing but pull down. Luther took the truth of God for his guide, and having first firmly established a few radical principles of Christianity against all the confederate counsels of princes, legates, and synods, held them forth, and gave them to. Rome, against the time of need, when her own rotten bulwarks and proud towers should fall. And having thus laid his foundation, and indicated it to Europe, he levelled blow after blow against Uome, and tore up her decayed battlements, leaving her the word of God to stand upon.

Voltaire saw the absurdities, and felt the evils of the Church of Rome, as well as Luther, and was resolved on some radical transformation, if not reform. But the change he aimed at was without truth, without religion, without God. “An evil spirit troubled him;” he had not the foresight, or if he had the foresight, he had not the moral principle, to perceive that, in destroying the religion of Rome, and giving France nothing in its stead, the result would be the most inhuman violence and barbarity. He defamed the Bible, trod it under his feet, and then spit upon and besmeared it. He professed to enlighten the minds of men, but threw over them the pall of darkness and death; he professed to be the people’s friend, but was their malignant enemy. He shut his ears against plain and conclusive argument, yet made his appeal to reason, dark, proud reason; he deified her, and the nation, by solemn legislative enactments, resolved that she was God! Paris, like the city of Ephesus of old, was filled with confusion, “some crying one thing, and some another,” till at length the populace, impersonating the goddess of reason, rushed to Notre Dame, with a vile prostitute on their shoulders, set her in the midst of God’s temple, and all called out for the space of two hours, “There is no God hut reason, and death is an eternal sleep /” Voltaire gained his object. The mind of France was liberated from Rome; he had knocked off its fetters, — it was free. No man ever accomplished his object more effectually. So did Luther accomplish his object; he accomplished it manfully; he revolutionized Germany, and other countries of Europe, and left the human mind free. The deeds of these two men are done; the scenes are past; and we, at this distance of time, can look at them. The fruit has had time to grow and become ripe; and what is it? Look at the effects of that controversy conducted by Luther, in Germany, Britain, Switzerland, Prussia, and even France itself; in the iron-bound coast and granite hills of New England; in the Hollanders and Huguenots of New Jersey and the Southern States, and the fermenting, swelling mass, of every name and kind, that are spreading between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. We can see also the effects of that disastrous revolution effected by Voltaire; some of us remember it, and the deep knell that sounded it to Europe and the world, still sounds in our ears. Romanism was destroyed in France, but there was nothing left, save selfish, violent, cruel passion, rioting in cruelty. The lion was unchained, and the hands that unchained him were the victims of his fury. A fire was kindled that notliinu: could put out; it wasted itself, and the land was bunit over. Every thing was destroyed; religion, morality, the marriage bond, kings, law, order, priests and altars, even liberty itself — every thing was involved in the universal ruin. Voltaire “made a desert, and called it peace.” It was a desert truly, such a moral wilderness, created in a Christian land, as the world had never seen before, nor since; it was carnage, it was the reform of infidelity. It records a lesson which all subsequent ages will read, — that men may be mighty controversialists, and move mighty minds, and mighty nations; but if they do nothing more than triumph over their prostrate foe, they accomplish nothing for the honor of God, or the best interests of their fellow men.

If there must be errors in the world, it is that “the truth may be made manifest.” Error is the cloud that envelopes the truth; it is of no service that the cloud be dissipated, unless truth be made to shine with the greater brilliancy. The pulpit had better have nothing to do with error, unless it be exposed and refuted with so masterly a hand, that, like a thin leaf of dull metal, placed under precious stones to make them appear the more transparent, it is made the “foil of truth.” It is pure truth which it inculcates, unless it goes out of its province; it is truth positive, and not simply errors refuted. There is no saving power but in God’s truth.

The pulpit also has a conflict with ignorance. No absolutely vacant mind can be a holy mind; even if it has no errors, and is simply denuded of every religious truth, it cannot be holy. If we expect fruit, Ave must plant the tree that is to bear it; it will not grow unless it is planted, any more than after it is planted it will grow among thorns. Whatever agency the pulpit exerts, it exerts through light, — light poured upon the understanding, illuminating the conscience, and penetrating and perforating the gloomy prison of the heart. The prince of darkness holds his empire over all the liiculties of the soul; and nothing disturbs it so certainly as truth. He would fain amuse men with fables, perplex them with sophistry, bind them by tradition, hold them in bondage by the decrees of Popes and Councils, and present his claims before his aAve-stricken hearers, surrounded in clouds and darkness. Truth disclaims all such appeals to human ignorance and superstition; her object is to instruct and convince. Men never were made Christians in any other AA-ay than on conviction. Nor does the Christian pulpit desire to make them Christians in any other way. It has no oracular decisions, save when it utters the oracles of God.

Wliatcver deference may be solicited for its instructions, no other is claimed for them than that which is the result of sober and enlightened thoui;:ht, and which is called for by a sense of responsibility to God alone. It is for “lack of knowledge’’ that the people are destroyed; it is “throu2:h the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;” it is because “they do not know, and will not consider;” because they “are a generation which know not the Lord;” because “they hated knowledge;’’ because they count not” all things but loss for the knowledge of Christ;” because they come not “to the knowledge of the truth,” and are ever “a people of no understanding’’’ There is ineffable splendor in God’s truth; and where these bright rays have no access to the soul, the light of it is put out, and it is “reserved to the blackness of darkness forever.” The truth proclaimed from the pulpit has wondrous efficacy in dissipating these dense and heavy mists of ignorance. They are “manifestations of the sovereign intelligence,” and have “a glow of divinity” about them, before which this intellectual darkness, and these thick vapors, are exhaled and dispelled. Erect a pulpit in the dark wilderness, where the man of God shall stand, thoroughly furnished for his work; and though it stand alone, its light shall be seen from afar, and the benighted and lost traveller shall hail it with joy. Multiply such pulpits, scatter them in clusters, and the desert would become like’ the Goshen of Israel, amid the thick darkness of Egypt.

The truth of which the pulpit is the vehicle, has also a contest with something more than error and ignorance. At the threshold of its career, there is the insensate stupidity, and the deeply imbedded hostility of the human mind. Indifferent to its claims as long as it can be, it resists them when it can no longer maintain its indifference. Truth has an energy to disturb and wake up this almost imperturbable indifference. Single-handed and alone, it cannot subdue this hostility; but it can check it; it can show its deformity and ugliness; it can throw around it those bonds of obligation, which nothing can relax, and bind by convictions which it is impossible to struggle with without a contest that is sometimes painful, even to despair. For this it has a iitness in its subject matter, and in the excellence, the force, the grandeur of its themes. They are lofty and subduing themes; themes which the preacher cannot approach without a feeling of solemnity, nor without some consciousness at least, that they bear him away from the narrow limits of earth, and the circumscribed sphere of time. Nor are they “smooth things,”

but “liglil tliinys,” Avhicli are never smooth. There is not one of them, rightly understood, that is fitted to please and gratify a mind that is enmity against God. They are weighty and solemn truths, “hard sayings,” and never agreeable to the corrupted taste of men. They do not fall in with their natural love of error; they destroy their good opinion of themselves; they oppose their worldly projects, and render them unhappy. They are universally obnoxious, except to pious and humble men. To all others it is a hardship to hear them, and a greater hardship to be under obligations to believe and love them. Give the pulpit a hearing, and it has truths to utter which will arouse men to fear and trembling. It has so many painful and unwelcome things to say, that the preacher must often brace his nerves to meet fierce opposition, and clothe himself with superhuman meekness and humility. It has nothing to do with suppressing, or modifyinothe truth of God, for the sake of pleasing men. The trust is too awful, the experiment too hazardous, either to blunt the edge of the sword, or throw away any part of the divine armor. When, with the simplicity of dependence on God, these weapons are faithfully and skilfully used, they constitute the parts of that heavenly panoply which find the most ready access to the conscience. They are aimed at the heart. They are designed to search and try the characters of men, and they make fearful discriminations between “him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.” They “take forth the precious from the vile,” and say to the righteous, that “it shall he well with him,” and “woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him.”

The Scriptures do not presume on an unresisted course for the truth of God. They foresee vigorous opposition; but their language to every religious teacher is, “Be not dismayed at their faces;” — “speak all that I command thee to speak, diminish not a word;” — “speak all my words, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.” This the Apostles did. They did not, as many do, “corrupt the word of God;” their exhortation “was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor of guile;” they “spake as of the oracles of God,” and as men who “feared not them which could kill the body, but rather him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” They went forth as “sheep in the midst of wolves,” assured that it was “enough for the disciple to be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord;” all of them “brethren and companions in tribulation, in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” A faithful preacher of the Gospel scarcely fails to produce uneasiness and dissatisfaction in the minds of the llioiig-litless; even the most thoun;lillt’ss not iiiifreqHently have paiiiliil and distressing views of the truth, because they are sensible of tlic obliyations which it enforces, and the everlasting consequences which it draws after it. The time is past when they care nothing about it; and if they contest and abuse it, if they cavil, and complain, and resist,* if they do all in their power to throw off its obligations; it is but augmented proof of its power; the more they struggle against it, the faster does it bind them in its chains.

Nor is this all which the truth accomplishes. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple.” God leads some in gentler ways, and by milder methods than others; yet are the struggles of the carnal mind ordinarily the death-struggles, the throes of expiring nature, when grace introduces the new-born soul into the kingdom of God. Truth is the instrumentality in its conversion. “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truths Being born again, “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God.’’” I have begotten you, through the Gospel Since religion consists in “receiving the truth in the love of it,” it cannot be received in love unless it be present to the thoughts, unless its obligations are perceived and felt by the conscience, unless its beauty and loveliness be recognized and acquiesced in by the gratilied affections. There is no better definition of spiritual and practical Christianity, than that it is the counterpart of truth in the heart and in the life. It is the fruit of God’s Spirit operating by his truth, and producing in the once alienated heart that delightful reconciliation to its nature and claims which constitutes the life of God in the soul of man. It is the image of the heavenly, where, but just now, there was nothing but the image of the earthly. It is the loveliest exhibition of the power of truth, wJien men “ghidly receive the word,” — the “ingrafted word, which is able to save the soul;” when the darkened understanding is illuminated, and the truth is thus understood and received. The Gospel comes, then, “not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.” It comes with peace and joy. It binds up the heart, it comforts the mourner, it sets the captive free. It solaces the soul with divine love; it shows it the pnth of life; it begets it to a “living hope of an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and which fadeth not away.”

Nor does the truth leave its work unfinished. The whole progress of sanctification, in all its parts and varieties, and in all the varieties of character in which it is effected, is not only consulted, but promoted by God’s truth.” Scmctifij

88 THE POWER OF TIIR PUT^PIT.

tlit’in (liroii;;!! ihy (nilli.” Tnitli is the aliment of every jirjicious |)iiiicij)l(% and every iracious exercise. The Christian lives ujxjuit; he irows in irace, us he lirows in knowledge. It is a “feast of lat things” to the soul, of “wines on the lees; of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refnied.” Thus fed and nourished, instead of pining away, and dragging out a pale and sickly existence, it “flourishes like the palm-tree, and grows like the cedar in Lebanon;” advances in holiness and is comforted in hope, till it “reaches the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus.”

In estimating the power of the pulpit, therefore, we give the first place to the truth of which it is the vehicle. Depraved as men are, they are controlled by moral causes, rather than by those that are physical; and now here are these moral causes so concentrated, nowhere have they so ready access to the human mind, and from no other source do they flow out in so many thousand channels, sometimes in streamlets that cherish the solitary and drooping plant, and sometimes in rivers that overflow the plain, as from this mountain of the Lord’s house.

But what is truth? Let a thinking man, after a day of wearied and anxious toil, throw himself upon his pillow, and ask this question; and he may indulge in almost endless reverie. He will look up to the heavens, and as lie watches the stars, and sees the moon walking in her brightness, he will almost involuntarily exclaim, Thei’e is truth. He reads lessons there which he can understand. He will look over the earth, scan its mountains and Valleys, and measure its streams; he will survey the blue ocean, where, at the presence of God, the “deep utters his voice, and lifts up his hands on high;” and he will say, There too is truth, thrilling truth, uttered by the voice of Him who “laid the beams of his chambers upon the mighty waters, and walks upon the wings of the wind.” He will inspect the dominion of an all-governing Providence, and there he will see in legible and dark characters the notices which the righteous Arbiter has imprinted of himself. He will think of the rise and fall of empires, of earthquakes, pestilence, famine, war, and death, — relentless death. And he will say, that is truth. — terrible truth! It were no marvel, if his heart should sicken at such a view. His mind is enveloped in a shroud; it is wrapt in a pall of darkness. Truth here is denuded of her loveliness; it is gloomy, horrible truth. Yet is it truth, — indisputable truth. There is no scepticism here. Men cannot dispute about such truths as these. They see them; they know them; they feel them. And this is just where the Bible places man, untaught and unillumined by brifi:]iter liulits than these. He is in darkness. These truths are terrible, because they have the reality, the permanence, the majesty of truth; it is this which gives them all their force. They are truths so obvious that men do not oppose them. The deist and the infidel believe them. They constitute the basis of their religion; dark as they are, they are truths they cling to, and defend, though at the expense of undermining another and more complete superstructure.

Amid such reflections, it were no marvel if the thought should occur to the wakeful mind of the inquirer, that there must be another manifestation of the truth, in order to relieve the mind, — to relieve the world from this dreadful pressure. Then perhaps he will think of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and of that early and impregnated promise; and he will feel the burden lightened, and will exclaim with joy, That too is truth. Then he will think of Moses receiving the law from God in the mount, amid the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of words; and then another law, both combined in one, through which this newly manifested truth receives the sanction and the seal of that everlasting covenant, which is ordered in all things, and sure. Here in this early age of the w orld, that truth began its course, which glimmered in types and shadows, and sacrifices, all pointing to the Lamb of God. He fmds these prefigurations perpetuated from age to age, illustrated by predictions, of which Christ is the object; fortified by promises of which Christ is the fulfilment; all and every one of them recognizing Christ as the medium of access to the injured Deity, the channel of all his grace and mercy, having himself obtained them, merited them, and, through the efficacy of his obedience unto death, became the dispenser of them to fallen man. Here his restive mind finds repose. He has found the truth, — the “truth as it is in Jesus.” Life and immortality are brought to light in the Gospel; and he presses to his bosom that wondrous system of truth which is the light and the life of men. Yet, strange to say, though this is the only truth which sheds light on the path of man, it is that which must needs be enforced by all the power of argument and persuasion. Obscure truths interest men. Nature’s light, which tells them of the grave; and reason’s flickering lamp, they will follow, even though it goes out at the tomb, and conducts them to a dark eternity. It is not with darkness, death, and despair that they have any contest. “They have loved darkness.” It is light that they quarrel with; — with life, with hope, with immortality, and eternal glory.

Yet is (his tlic truth which gives the pulpit all its power. Its facts, its doctrines, its duties, its scrutiny, its rehukes, its invitations, its threatenings, its promises, its consolations, its motives, its worship, its ordinances, and more than all, its atoning Saviour, himself the beginning and the end, the first and the last, — this is the truth which constitutes the power of the pulpit. “I have determined to know nothing among you,” says the great Apostle of the Gentiles, ^’ save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.^^ The pulpit is powerless where the cross of Christ is not maijnified. Christ must be the theme, the scope, the life, the soul of the pulpit. It may have the subtilties of philosophy, the attainments of accomplished literature, and the enticing words which man’s “wisdom teacheth;” but it has no powerful attraction of God’s truth, where Christ is wanting. The preacher may not hope to see the strong cords of earth broken, the fetters of gold dissolved, or any of the fascinations of sin disturbed by wdiich the spell-bound mind is held in bondage, until he throws around it the stronger attractions of redeeming love. There is wondrous powder in the pulpit where the cross is lifted up, and where, instead of attracting men to himself, the minister of God would fain attract them to his and their Saviour. What savors not of the cross of Christ, belongs not to the work of a Christian minister. A sinner, saved by grace, who is a preacher of glad tidings to his fellow-men, will keep as near the cross as he can. He may sometimes make a larger circuit around it than at others, because it unfolds “the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God;” but his favorite themes are drawn from it, and the arrows he makes the most use of are dipped in its blood. “Christ is my armory,” says that lovely preacher, McCheyne, “I go to him for the whole armor of God, — the armor of light. My sword and my buckler, my sling and my stone are all laid up in Jesus.” In no other way can the dark, depraved, obdurate mind be brought under the enlightening, convincing, converting, sustaining, purifying influence of God’s truth.

Such truth has power. It is “mighty throu2:h God.” It is truth in all its forms, offices, and urgency. It is truth demonstrated, illustrated, embellished, and enforced. It is rousing, convincing, transforming truth. It is truth pleading with the obdurate, encouraging the discouraged and desponding, comforting sorrow, and giving exultation and triumph to hope. It is truth rebuking, truth weeping, truth rejoicing. It is truth in full-robed loveliness and glory, shining on the darkness of time, and discovering the strong and steady liirlit of eternity, liftins: the veil from the habitations of the second death, — travelling on towards glory, honor, immortality and eternal life.

Such truth has power, and it is the power the pulpit aims at. It asks not any other triumphs, it seeks the glory of no other empire. It craves the privilege of carrying the light of heaven to this dark and dungeon earth, and of lighting up the beacon of hope in this world of despair. Give it this, and all other influences combined do not accomplish a tithe of that which is accomplished by this simple instrumentality. Other influences are as widely diflerent from this as the words of men from the words of God, — as the powers of earth from the powers of heaven. There is nothing like it

in this low world.

Beautiful, unutterably beautiful, are these

achievements of truth. What wonders has it

wrought? Greater are its victories than were

ever won on the field of battle; its laurels

greener than ever Caesar wore. God hath

given his truth a tongue; it may be the tongue

of the learned, or the tongue of artless, but

elTcctive expostulation; but it is expostulation

which every heart feels that is not like a rock

of granite. Nay, adamant as it is, God’s truth

is the” fire and the hammer that brcaketh

the rock in pieces.” It is the” rod of God’s

Strength’” which he sent out of Zion. It is the “sword of the Spirit” which the Mighty Conqueror girds on when he rides forth to his most brilliant victories; it is the inscription on his banner, when he returns from the field of triumph.