The Living Teacher

While the truth of which the pulpit is the vehicle, is in the order of time and nature, the first great element of its power, it is not truth presented in every form. Among the constituent elements of its usefulness must undoubtedly be reckoned the fact, that the selected method by ichich it communicates Gods’ truth is the living teacher.

The earliest communications to men were not made by written documents, nor by the press. Our hrst parents were not, as some have supposed, the rude children of nature, nor were they untaught. It was the paternal voice of God that fell with such impressiveness upon their listening and obedient ear, before their apostasy. It was also through this channel that the subtle Deceiver conveyed his poison; the snare was laid by whispering his word of promise to the ear.

For the first twenty-five hundred years after the creation, all the revelations from Heaven, with the few exceptions of supernatural dreams.

visions, and reveries, were conveyed, either from the lips of God himself, or from angelic, or human voices. Very often the angels of God were sent from heaven to hold converse with worms; and face to face, to utter to men the messages of Divine instruction, rebuke, ’ and mercy. During the long period between Adam and Moses, these divine communications were made in no other way. We have no authentic proof of the introduction of alphabetical writing prior to the giving of the Law on Mount Sanai, or even prior to the date of the Pentateuch. To make a permanent revelation of His will to men, it was necessary that it should be in writing; so that it might remain as the exhaustless depository, and unchanging standard of truth, unmingled with the fictions of men, uncorrupted by fable, and independent of the uncertainties of tradition. But the instructions that were designed for umnediate effect were communicated in a way better fitted to arrest the attention, and less liable to perversion and abuse.

We find so many representations of this sort in the Scriptures, that it is almost superfluous to refer to them. “God S2:)ake to Jacob at Bethel.” “God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord.” “The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb.” He spake to Abraham; he spake in the bush to Moses; he spake to the

Prophets, and lliroiiiih llicm he spake to his people. I do not know that we find the phraseology anywhere in the Scriptures, that he wrote to his ancient people, that all Israel might read; but we do find tiic phraseology, that he spalie to them, and commanded others to sjyeak to them,” so that all Israel might hear.’’’

When Moses expressed his reluctance to appear before Pharaoh, it was because he was conscious that he “was slow of speech and of a slow tongue.” He had every other qualification and attainment, which Egyptian and Divine learning could give; but he had not the faculty of uttering in an impressive manner what he knew. When God directed him to associate Aaron in this embassy, the reason he gave for this arrangement was the qualifications of Aaron as a public speaker: — “for I know that he can speak well.” It would seem, that in the judgment of Infinite wisdom, truth must be spoken, and well spoken, in order to have its proper effect.

That they might make a deeper impression still, not unfrequently these Divine communications were reduced to rythm, and sung; as in the Song of Moses at the Red Sea, and the Song of Deborah, and the Psalms of David. The truths contained in these divine sonffs were not only spoken to the people; the people were requii-ed to utter and rehearse them in sacred sotig; that they might understand and remember them; peradventure, the sweet sounds that conveyed them to their ear, might find a lingering echo in their hearts. Sacred music is the highest style of sacred eloquence. “Singing and making melody in our hearts unto the Lord;” to “sing with the spirit and with the understa?idi7ig also,” is one of the most effective measures of making a deep and permanent impression of Divine truth upon the mind. Some of the most successful preachers of the Gospel have made abundant use of this method of religious instruction; and in more than one printed narrative of revivals of religion in this land, this method of teaching has been specified as one of the honored means of grace and salvation. And who has not read of it in the usages of those noble and slandered men, the Scottish Covenanters, and the Puritans of England, in the days of Cromwell? Not a few Christians will be found who are in the habit of adding this method of instruction to their private devotions, and who have found in it no ordinary means of spiritual advancement.

The sacred writers concede high pre-eminence to the tongue of man; it is his glory and bis disgrace; the best member of his frame, when devoted to purposes that are good; when devoted to evil purposes, it is the worst. It blesses and it blasphemes; it diffuses a healthy and heavenly iuflucnce, or it is like a firebrand, scorcliiiii]^ and burning as t liouiih it were united at the flames that never shall be quenched. “By thy words thou shalt be justified,” says the Saviour, “and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” “If any man offend not in word,” says the apostle James, “the same is a perfect man.” The tongue exerts the great controlling iiilluence in the world. It turns about, and governs the mass of minds on which it acts, just as the horse obeys the bit, or the ship the helm. There is a peculiarity in the sins of the tongue which the Bible stigmatizes above all other sins. There are instances in VN’hich men may lawfully deceive by their silence, or by actions which they mean should be misconstrued. To act such a deception, is a different thing from uttering it; the action 7nay be right and just, the uttered falsehood nothing can justify. The tendency of the principle that falsehood is justifiable, would be ruinous; the mere act utters nothing; it is dubious in its import, and maij be as innocent as a man’s taking a diflerent path from that which he seemed to take, for the purpose of avoiding his pursuer. The enormity of the unpardonable sin consists in the fact that it is an uttered sin. It may exist in the heart, or it may be uttered in the retirement of the closet, and may be repented of and forgiven; but if uttered in the cars of men, it has aggravations which put the perpetrator beyond repentance, and therefore beyond pardon. And the reason for the discrimination is, the all-controlling influence of the tongue.

These remarks may not be hastily deemed a digression from our main object; they are designed to show that the best way of addressing divine truth to the mind is not so much through the eye as through the ear. It is not by lofty domes, nor gorgeous priestly apparel, nor splendid paintings, and sculptured images; these mislead the mind, and form rather the religion of the imagination than the religion of the understanding and the heart. There is no small amount of such religion in the world. We would not wage indiscriminate warfare with the religion of the imagination; it is the province of true religion to elevate and sanctify all the faculties of the soul; but we need not be taught that the religion in which the imagination predominates is a very imperfect religion, nor that the religion of which the imairination constitutes the sum and substance, is spurious and false. It displaces the religion of the heart; it is sentimentalism, and not piety: it originates in false principles; it expends itself in outward parade and solemnity; it exhausts itself in forms. It is the religion of art and architecture, of walls and altars; of silver shrines and golden gods; of unmeaning ceremonies and plmntiisms, ■vvliicli tlistnicl tlioiiglil, and unfit the mind for the Avorsliip of him ^vllo is a Spirit, and must be -worshipped in spirit and in truth. The Church of Rome places her great reliance upon this sort of teaching, and her religion is in keeping with her policy. The great desire of her worshippers is to be pleased; and the secret of her success is that she pleases them. Instructive and humbling truths are things she little thinks of; she speaks to the eye, she fascinates the senses, and if there be some truths inwoven in her system, they are neutralized by the manner in which they are presented, and evaporate with the fragrance of her incense. Unhappily, there is a strong tendency in the age in which we live, to this sort of religion, even in some Protestant churches. Preaching the truth of God is a very small matter with them; beyond the circle of Apostolical Succession, and the participation of divine ordinances at the hands of their own priesthood, as the indispensable condition of salvation, there are few subjects on which they are well informed. Some among them indeed there are, not “of the straitest sect,” who are faithful preachers of Christ and him crucified; ho at the same time, on these controverted topics know more than they preach, and have not the persecutors’s excuse, “I did it ignorantly and in unbelief.”

We have adverted to the teachings of the Old Testament on the subjects of oral, religious instruction; let us briefly advert to the teaching of the New. Timothy was exhorted by Paul, “to give attendance to readmg;” but it was that he might become an able yiracher. There are passages in the New Testament which speak of the importance of reading God’s truth. The Saviour read the Scriptures in the Synagogue of Nazareth; he demanded of the inquiring Lawyer, “What is written in the Law; how readest thou?” Paul’s epistles were written to be read; he charges the Thessalonians, that his epistle to them “be read by all the holy brethren;” and he gives the like charge to the Colossians, that his epistle to them be read in the church of the Laodiceans;” and that the Colossians “likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.” The revelation which the angel made to John is prefaced by the declaration, “Blessed is he that readeth and understandeth the words of this prophecy.” Yet does the whole scope of their instructions show, that it is not so much through the printed page, as a jireached Gospel, that men are converted to God. “As ye go, preach.’” “Go, preach my Gospel.” God hath sent me to preach the Gospel. “To me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.” It is the great law of lOi THE POWKR OF THK PULPIT.

God’s kinofdom, (hat “it pleased God by the foolishness of preach ilg to save them that believe.” There it stands too, inscribed on the foundations of Zion. “So then faith cometh by hearing;” — not by seeing, nor by reading, but by hearing. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.” The parable of the Sower teaches this same fact; and hence, at the close of that parable, the Saviour deduces from it this great practical inference, “Take heed, therefore, how ye hear /” Paul declares to Timothy, that God “hath in due time manifested his word through preaching.” The instrumentality in the salvation of men which they emphasize, is “the hearing of faith.”

The fact is too obvious from observation and experience, that “the Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them in holiness and comfort, through faith unto salvation.” That wise observer of the operations of God’s grace, Robert Hall, in a “Circular Letter on Hearing the Word,” addressed to the ministers and churches of the Northamptonshire Association, among other excellent remarks, makes the observation, that “there is every reason to suppose that the far greater part of those who have been truly sanctified and enlightened, will ascribe the change they have experienced, to the hearing of faith.” “Religion,” says Dr. D wight, “has been so co-exten.sive with preaching, that where preaching has not been, there has, with scarcely a solitary exception, been no religion: and wherever preaching has existed for any length of time, religion has almost invariably existed also,”

God’s institutions are wise. “With him is wisdom and strength; he hath counsel and understanding.” Nothing is more obvious than the wisdom of this divine arrangement; upon all the principles of our common nature, it is the best fitted for effect. Among its peculiar advantages, the following are worthy of consideration.

It reaches the greatest numbers in the shortest time. The Gospel is a message to the race; to millions it would be a dead letter, if it were not a preached Gospel. Constituted as men are, more minds are reached from the pulpit than in any other way. Men would not read it, if it were simply a printed Gospel, because it treats of subjects in which they feel little concern, and to which they are naturally hostile; and because the mass of men have notx time for profitable reading. They will read a newspaper, because it tells them what they wish to know; but they will not read a religious discourse. But they will hear it; and lOG THE POWER OF THE PCLPIT.

they do hviw a miillitiule of such (liscourses, which, if carried (o their doors, and hiid upon their tables, thoy would never read. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, are virtually readinc the same book, when thus listening to the instructions of a single living preacher. It is not often that so many persons read so good a book as <hey thus hear read, or spoken from the pul])it. Nor is it often that the same amount of instruction is communicated to them all in any other way; and never within the same compass of time, and with the same intellectual eflfort on the part of the instructed.

Such instructions, too, are more apt to be understood by the mass of mankind, than the same instructions when merely spread before the eye. The mass of men are not thinking men; such are their intellectual habits, that had they ever so much time, they are not reading men; their minds are not subjected to the patient discipline which renders reading pleasant and profitable. We honor the press; we know its vast importance to the world; but the men who profit from the religious press are not the mass of mankind, nor even the mass of those who hear the most instructive preaching. They are the reading and thinking men who profit by it; and the mass of mankind are profited only as the former class of men become their teachers. There is no reason to believe that one in ten of the excellent religious tracts that are so widely distributed, are ever read; though we may not doubt the wisdom, the Christian duty of distributing them; for if one in ten be read and understood, the seed so widely scattered cannot fail to yield a joyous harvest. There is more reason to doubt the wisdom of this distribution in heathen lands, and especially at so heavy an expenditure of funds as has been reported by the American Tract Society for several years last past. The same amount of funds expended in sending the living timiistry — funds, and a ministry so earnestly demanded — would, I am persuaded, accomplish more extensively and more eft’ectively the great objects of that noble institution.

It affords me not a little pleasure, since the writing the preceding paragraphs, and before these pages go to the press, to have ascertained from the indefatigable Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, that this subject is now the matter of wakeful discussion by their Prudential Committee. It gives me the opportunity of adding thoughts, confirming my own impressions, which, in the original draught of the present chapter, I knew not were entertained by others. In the “Missionary Herald” for March, of the present year, is a very interesting communication from the Rev. Mr. Pohlman, missionary at

Amoy, in China, on the subject of Avliicli we are speakinuf. The vast |)()j)uIa(iou of Cliiiia has generally been supposed to be a more reading people than that of any other Pagan land; and on this account quite as accessible to the efforts of the press, as to the instructions of the living teacher. On this subject Mr. Pohlman says, “I rejoice that the Committee have laid down as a starting point, that the grand object for which the Board should sustain missions in China is the oral publication of the Gospel to the Chinese people.” The writer proceeds to substantiate this view, by several distinct considerations, clearly conceived, and ably illustrated, prefacing his illustrations with the important remark, that his “statements and conclusions are the results of several years’ labor at Amoy.” His positions are, that “the number of intelligent readers, compared with the whole population, is very small;” — that “the mass of superstitions and traditions afloat among the people is a peculiarity calling for faithful preachers of the Gospel;” — that “the language of China is addressed more to the ear than to the eye;” — that “the inability of the Chinese fully to understand our books, presents a loud call for teachers to guide them;” — that “the social character of the people invites the labors of oral instructors;” — that “in the progress of civilization in China, a foundation is laid for the preacher;” — that “public preaching is not a novel thing to the Chinese;” and that “■ the desire of many of the people to hear foreigners is another loud call for preaching missionaries.” In conftrmation of these thoughts, in a recent work professing to furnish a “Survey of the Chinese Empire,” entitled “The Middle Kingdom,” by S. W. Williams, it is stated, that notwithstanding the extensive distribution of the Scriptures, and of other religious books and tracts, by Liang Afah and Giitzlaflf, and subsequently by Messrs. Medhurst, Stevens and Lay, and Messrs. Dickenson and Wolfe, scattering as they did fifty thousand volumes on the coast, and double that number about Canton and Macao, “so far as is known not an instance has occurred of a Chinese coming to a Missionary to have any passage explained, nor any person converted who has attributed his interest in religion to the unassisted reading of these books.” These are all forcible considerations; and we will venture to ask, not only if they are not conclusive in regard to China, but in regard to every other heathen land?

I confess a smile passed over my countenance, when I read the communications just referred to, and I said within myself, these beloved men have been reading their Bibles. The truth is, human nature is the same thing all over the world. All Ian2:iia2:c is addressed more to “I he ear tliau (o the eye.” This is the meaiiiiiL!: and deliuitioii of Ian<T^uage. It is thoui»’ht uttered by the tongue. It is the teaching of the workl; if men are slow to believe and act upon this obvious truth, they will most certainly be taught by experience. It requires an intellect in no small degree cultivated, to read any work, beyond the simplest narrative, to advantage. One reason why works of a purely narrative character are read by so large a portion of readers, in preference to more grave and spirited discussions is, that the latter demand too much intellectual effort.

We are not so foolish and arrogant as to claim all the intelligence in the world for the ministers of the Gospel; while it is our iirm conviction, that the great benefit which the religions press confers on the great masses of men, is by first instructing their religious teachers. Nor is it too much to say, that those among them who become profited readers of religious books, become so because they are first taught by the pulpit. There is very little religious reading where the mind is not awakened to it, and prepared for it, by the instructions of the sanctuary.

Reading does men no good any farther than they imderstand it. It is recorded in the Old Testament, that the religious leaders of Israel

THE LIVING TEACHER. Ill

“read in the Book of the Law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused the people to understand the readinGf.” “Understandest thou what thou readest V said Philip to the Eunuch of Ethiopia. ‘’How can /,” replied he, “unless some man should guide me?” Then Philip opened his mouth, ‘•’ and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.” Our blessed Lord, after having delivered in succession several of his most interesting and instructive parables, explained them to his disciples. It is delightful to mark his care and condescension in this particular, and this remarkable characteristic of his instructions. He took them aside by themselves, and when they were alone, not only made his explanations full and explicit, but after he had done so, asked them. Bo you understand? They were solemn truths he had been uttering, and he desired that they should be understood. “Jesus saith unto them. Have ye understood all these things V They say unto him,” Yea, Lord.“” Favored disciples! blessed Teacher! This is the preacher’s business. His trumpet may not give an uncertain sound; it must be distinct and determinate. If he is intelligent, he will be intelligible; if he is faithful, he not only may but must be understood.

We are persuaded also that the method of instructing men by a preached Gospel is the

112 TllK POWER OF THi: PULPIT.

most economical arnini;iMuciit. This is no uiiim- ])or(;int considenilion, liowovcr triilinu the remark may seem. No suth amount of religious iuslruclion can be imparted Avitii the same certainly, at so little cost. A rural pastor of a conii’regation consisting of a thousand souls, furnishes, at a moderate estimate, including the exercises of the Sabbath and the week, one hundred and fifty-six discourses a year; including: other exercises, five hundred and sixty-eight. He virtually distributes a thousand tracts every sermon he preaches, and every prayer he offers. This is an aggregate of forty-six thousand and eight hundred tracts a year. And if his salary be a thousand dollars, at the average expense of one dollar a year, each individual is supplied with this number of tracts. Can human ingenuity devise a more economical arrangement for furnishing the world with religious instruction 1

But what is of greater importance, the instructions of the living teacher are beyond measure 7nore impressive and affecting than any other method of instruction. Men are the creatures, not of thought only, but of feeling; they have susceptibilities to emotion; they are susceptibilities which seek to be gratified, and which ought to be turned to good account. Nature demands the presence, the sympathy, the eye, the voice, the action, the expressive countenance of the living teacher. Thought, and shades and emphasis of thought, are thus expressed which must otherwise be concealed. It is thus that the parent influences his child, the teacher his pupil, and the men of the world one another. Men are interested in what the speaker says, by observing how he .says it. His vividness of voice and gesture often tells even more than his words. They note his sincerity and earnestness; they observe the emotions by which his own bosom is agitated; and even though unconcerned, and unwon, they are not unmoved. The most powerful appeals ever made to the reason, the conscience, the the interest, or the passions of men, are not made from the press, but from the warm heart and glowing lips of the living speaker. The Areopagus of Athens, the Senate House of Rome, the British Parliament, the French Chambers, the halls of the American Congress, and the Bar, furnish abundant tribute to the power of the living speaker over all other methods of instruction and influence. Mighty events have been suspended on the uttered words of men. That terrible scene, the French Revolution, — a page in history never to be blotted out, was produced more by the impassioned and inflammatory harangues of Mirabeau, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, than even by the ferocious mob of Paris. “Frenchmen,” said

Marat, borne on the shoulders of the rabble through the Rue St. Ilonore, “there is a cons])iracy on foot to murder the patriots of Paris. The troops of the provinces are coming, by order of the king, to put man, woman, and child, to the sword. The fete at Marseilles is given to the vanguard of the army, to pledge them to this terrible purpose. The governors of the provinces are all in this league of blood. The bakers of Paris have received an order from Versailles to put poison in all their loaves within the next twenty-four hours. Frenchmen, do you love your wives and children? Will you suffer them to die in agonies before your eyes? Wait, and you will have nothing to do but dig their graves. Advance, and you will have nothing to do but drive the tyrant, with his horde of priests and nobles, into the Seine. Pause, and you are massacred; arm, and you are invincible.” The livid villain was “answered by shouts of vengeance.” Burning words like these formed the cascade, the torrent, that set in motion that mighty revolutionary engine; they were the fires in those Jacobinical clubs that made the steam for that furious machinery. So it has been elsewhere. Pym, Hampden, and Vane, in the stormy days of the Commonwealth of England, gave impulse to the sword of Cromwell, Fairfax, and Ire ton. And what was it that has given a single man, in our own times, such wondrous ascendency over Ireland, that the populace moved at his bidding, but his power to “agitate and agitate,” by being thus brought into direct and personal communication with his countrymen in their public assemblies? It were a great oversight in us to overlook that noble exempliiiication of the power of oral above all other methods of influencing the minds of men w hich has just been furnished by an accomplished modern orator. Paris w as all on fire; the mob had already the taste of blood, and was ripe for every form and degree of lawless vengeance. Nor was it until after six long hours of bold and impassioned appeal, that their infuriate madness could be arrested. But Leviathan was tamed; there was a charm in the eloquence of Lamartine that laid the angry populace at his feet.

This is a pre-eminence that may be occupied by good men, and in a good cause. It is occupied by the pulpit: mind is here brought into contact with mind, face with face, heart with heart. Whatever there is of riches, greatness and force in the truth of God, and whatever of power in human language, and of moving sympathy in the living preacher, urging that truth with all the clearness, and ardor, and enthusiasm he is enabled to bring to his great vocation.

here have the best opportunity of forming the characters of men.

There is no more impressive ilhistration of the power of the living teacher, than that ■wliich results from a comparison of the printed and uttered discourses of the most powerful preachers. When you read the discourses of Whitfield, you can scarcely be persuaded that he was the prince of preachers; and that the author of those printed pages was the man who collected 20,000 hearers on the open field at Leeds; who fjiscinated all ranks of society; who held Hume in profound admiration; and who brought the infidel Chesterfield to his feet, with outstretched arms, to rescue the wanderer from the fold of God, whom the preacher represented in the act of falling over the precipice. You read his sermons, but the jjreacher is not there. That glance of his piercing eye that hushed thousands to silence in the open field, is not there. That voice, at a single intonation of which a whole audience has been known to burst into tears, is not there. That instant communication between the living speaker and his hearers, which creates so powerful a sympathy, is not there. Some of the best discourses of the late Dr. Mason, the distinguished preacher of our own city, have been given to the world; but rich as they are in matter, and forcible in style, and though they exhibit not a few of the peculiarities of their great author, make a feeble impression upon the mind of the reader, compared with that made upon the minds of those who listened to them from the pulpit. That celebrated and beautiful discourse entitled, “The Value of the Gospel,” from the text, “To the poor the Gospel is preached,” was pronounced in the city of New Haven, in the year 1808, in the presence of one of the largest, most intellectual, and Christian audiences ever assembled in this land. The sun had just risen, when torrents oi men were seen pouring to the house of God. There were ministers of the Gospel, both the aged and the young. Learned Professors, reflecting Judges of the law, and Lawyers in their pride, were there. There were Senators and men of learning, from every part of the land. There sat the venerable D wight, and the not less venerable Backus, melted into a flood of tears. That vast auditory, which seemed at first only to listen with interest, and then gaze with admiration, with few exceptions covered their faces and wept. Yet when you read the discourse, the charm is gone. There was a dignity, a majesty, and withal an attractive tenderness where the preacher stood, which are not found in the printed page. That memorable discourse of the late Dr. Dwight, entitled “Life a Race,” as well as that so effectively pronounced, in more than one of our pulpits, by the late Dr. Griffin, on the “Knowledi^e of God,” will both be lonf remembered as an lienor to the American ministry; but who that heard them does not dwell rather on the memory of the past, and turn from the dead volume to the living preacher?

It depends on the reader whether the thoughts in the printed page have emphasis; in uttered discourses it depends on the speaker. An intimate friend of the late Rev. John Fletcher, remarks in a letter to Mr. Gilpin, that “he would rather have heard one sermon from Mr. Fletcher, than read a volume of his works.” His words are clothed with power as we read them; but just conceive such a man as Fletcher uttering, as he did, such burning, melting thoughts as the following: “See, pardon for lost sinners is written with pointed steel, and streaming blood. His open arms invite, draw, welcome the returning prodigal. Fly then, miserable sinner, if thy flesh is not brass, and thou canst not dwell with everlasting burnings, fly for shelter to the bloody cross of Jesus!” Such emotions have no counterpart in types and paper.

We have already remarked that the Christian ministry enjoys the opportunity of exerting this influence beyond any other class of public speakers. They enjoy it on the Lord’s Day, and more usually once at least during the week. More than one hundred and fifty times a year, they ordinarily come before the great congregation, with the messages of God’s eternal truth. The privilege is theirs without interruption; no man forbidding them, and none contradicting, or opposing them. The entire field of discussion, and expostulation, and appeal is, by law and courtesy, their own. Wonderful power is this over the minds of men! Give it to the demagogue, and what more would he ask? The late Aaron Burr, at the close of the last religious service of the Amerlean troops, as they were just about embarking for Quebec, under Arnold, said to the chaplain of the detachment, a man of no mean powers, “Sir, you gentlemen of the black cloth have greater opportunities of influencing the minds of men, than the gentlemen of any other profession.” Nor was the remark extravagant. Multiply the missionaries of evil as the Christian pulpits are multiplied, and what more would the Spirit of Evil desire?

Nor is this all. The Christian ministry addresses men under all those adventitious circumstances that are fitted to give them influence. It is the Day of God and his sanctuary that convokes them, and those who hear them; the day when men rest from the care and toil of earth; the house of prayer, none other than the gate of lioaven, wliicli they go to knock at. Multitudes arc there, and unearthly influences are around them. The God of Iieaven and the King of the universe is there, and it is from his oracles that they hear and learn the way of life. They are his altars on which the sacrifice is offered, and it is consecrated by the voice of prayer and praise. There may be no pomp and magnificence in the worshi]); there may be no massive architecture; no decorated walls and altars; no deep-toned organ and enchanting choir; no ceremony to strike the senses and exalt the imagination; and nothing more than the simplest worship offered to Ilim who “dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” But there is impressive and imposing solemnity. There is the worship of the heart offered to One who is himself ‘’a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth.” Nor may the thought be depreciated, that the scene is one, where every thing which the preacher utters is enforced by all the sympathies of social life; sympathies that are never purer, and never more hallowed and delightful, than in the house of God. They are the families of God’s people that are there assembled, adorned in the beauties of holiness, attracted to the sanctuary by all that is affectionate in the love of parents to their children, and all that is beautiful in the honor paid by children to their parents.

And where, if not amid such scenes, and listening to such truths, can the mind of man ever hope to exert an influence over other minds? Ought not such a ministry to be clothed with power? What cause has such a hearing as that of the Christian pulpit 1 -