clergyman is to draw the subject-matter of his discourses, and the layman is to derive all his certain and infallible knowledge respecting his future prospects and destiny, is it not plain that if there be lethargy and torpor on the part of either the preacher or the hearer, if there be a lack of eloquence, it will not be the fault of the written revelation? As we look abroad over Christendom, do we not perceive the great need of a more incisive impression from those particular truths which relate to these personal qualities, these moral feelings of the Deity, which cut sharply into the conscience, probe and cleanse the corrupt heart, and induce that salutary fear of God which the highest authority assures us is the beginning of wisdom? Is there in nominal Christendom such a clear and poignant insight into the nature of sin and guilt, such reverential views of the divine holiness and majesty, and such a cordial welcoming of the atonement of God, as have characterised all the earnest eras in church history-the Pentecostal era in the Primitive Church, the Protestant Church in the age of the Refor mation, and the American churches in the great awakening of 1740? Is there not a leaven of legality even in the Christian experience of the day, that interferes greatly with that buoyant, evangelic spirit which ought always to distinguish what Luther calls a "justified" man? And if we contemplate the mental state and condition of the multitude who make no profession of godliness, and in whom the naturalism of the age has very greatly undermined the old ancestral belief in a sin-hating and a sin-pardoning Deity, do we not find still greater need of the fire and the hammer of the word of the Lord?

II. How, then, can we more appropriately conclude the discussion of this subject, than by directing attention, in the second place, to that sort of understanding, with regard to this mode of preaching, which ought to exist between the preacher and the hearer; that intellectual temper which the popular mind should adopt and maintain towards this style of homiletics. For if, as we remarked in the outset, the effectiveness of the orator is dependent, to some extent, upon the receptivity of the auditor, then there is no point of more importance to the Christian ministry than the general attitude of the public mind towards the stricter truths and doctrines of revelation. What, then is the proper temper in hearing, which is to stand over against this proper tone in preaching?

In order to answer this question, we must in the outset notice the relation that exists between divine truth and an apostate mind like that of man, and the call which it makes for moral earnestness and resoluteness. For we are not treating of public religious address for the seraphim, but for the sinful children of men; and we shall commit a grave error, if we asssume that the eternal

and righteous truth of God, as a matter of course, must fall like blessed genial sun-light into the corrupt human heart, and make none but pleasant impressions at first. It is therefore necessary, first of all, to know precisely what are the affinities, and also what are the antagonisms, between the guilty soul of man and the holy word of God.

It is plain that such an antagonism is implied in the prophet's interrogatory. For if the word of God is "as a fire," the human mind, in relation to it, must be as a fuel. For why does fire exist except to burn? When, therefore, the message from God breathes that startling and illuminating spirit which thrilled through the Hebrew prophets, and at times fell from the lips of Incarnate Mercy itself, still and swift as lightning from the soft summer cloud, it must cause

"Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow and pain,
In mortal minds."

The posture, consequently, which the "mortal mind" shall take and keep in reference to such a painful message and proclamation from the heavens, is a point of the utmost importance. Many human soul is lost because at a certain critical juncture in its history it yielded to its fear of mental suffering. The word of God had begun to be "a fire" unto it, and foreseeing (oh, with how quick an instinct!) a painful process of self-scrutiny and selfknowledge coming on, it wilfully broke away from all such messages and influences, flung itself into occupations and enjoyments, and quenched a pure and good flame that would have only burnt out its dross and its sin, a merely temporary flame that would have superseded the necessity of the eternal one that is now to come. For there is an instinctive and overmastering shrinking in every man from suffering, which it requires much resolution to overcome. The prospect of impending danger rouses his utmost energy to escape from it, and his soul does not recover its wonted tranquillity until the threatening calamity is overpast. In this lies all the power of the drama in its higher forms. The exciting impression made by a tragedy springs from the steadily increasing danger of suffering which thickens about the career of principal characters in the plot. The liability to undergo pain, which increases as the catastrophe approaches, united with the struggles of the endangered person to escape from it, waken a sympathy and an excitement in the reader or the spectator, stronger than that produced by any other species of literature. And whenever the winding-up of any passage in human history lifts off the burden of apprehension from a human being, and exhibits him in the enjoyment of the ordinary happy lot of humanity, instead of crushed to earth by a tragic issue of life, we draw a breath so long and free as to evince that we share a common nature, one of whose

deepest and most spontaneous feelings is the dread of suffering and pain.

And yet, when we have said this, we have not said the whole. Deep as is this instinctive shrinking from distress, there are powers and motives which, when in action, will carry the human soul and body through scenes and experiences at which human nature, in its quiet moods and its indolent states, stands aghast. There are times when the mind, the rational judgment, is set in opposition to the body, and compels its earth-born companion to undergo a travail and a woe from which its own constitutional love of ease and dread of suffering shrink back with a shuddering recoil.

This antagonism between the sense and the mind is seen in its most impressive forms within the sphere of ethics and religion. Even upon the low position of the stoic, we sometimes see a severe dealing with luxurious tendencies, and a lofty heroism in trampling down the flesh, which, were it not utterly vitiated by pride and vainglorying, would be worthy of the martyr and the confessor. But when we rise up into the region of entire self-abnegation for the glory of God, we see the opposition between the flesh and the spirit in its sublimer form, and know something of the terrible conflict between mind and matter in a fallen creature, and still more of the glorious triumph in a redeemed being of truth and righteousness over pain and fear. "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee," is a command that has actually been obeyed by thousands of believers-by the little child and by the tender and delicate woman who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness -not in stoical pride and self-reliance, not with self-consciousness and self-gratulation, but in meekness and fear, and in much trembling, and also in the spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind.

There is call, therefore, on the part of the hearer of religious truth, for that sort of temper which is expressed in the words of the Psalmist," Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness." In this resolute utterance, suffering is not deprecated, as it would be if these instincts and impulses of human nature had their way and their will, but is actually courted and asked for. That in the Psalmist which needs the smiting of the righteous and of righteousness, and which for this reason shrinks from it, is rigorously kept under, in order that the infliction may be administered for the honour of the truth and the health of the soul.

And such, it is contended, should be the general attitude of the public mind towards that particular form and aspect of divine revelation which has been delineated in the first part of this article. Every human being, the natural as well as the spiritual

man, ought to say, "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; let the truth and law of God seize with their strongest grasp, and bite upon my reason and conscience, it shall be an eternal blessing to me." We do not suppose that the natural man, as such, can make these words his own in the high and full sense in which they were uttered by the regenerate and inspired mind of David. But we do suppose that every auditor can control his impatience, and repress his impulses to flee away from the hammer and the fire, and conquer his prejudices, and compel his ear to hear doctrinal statements that pain his soul, and force his understanding to take in truths and arguments that weigh like night upon his feelings, and that say to him, as did the voice that cried in the tortured soul of Macbeth," Sleep no more; rest and peace for thee in thy present state are gone for ever." Has not the Christian ministry a right to expect a tacit purpose and a resolute self-promise, upon the part of every attendant upon public worship, to hold the mind close up to all logical and selfconsistent exhibitions of revealed truth, and take the mental, the inward consequences, be they what they may? One of the early fathers speaks of the "ire of truth." Ought not every thinking, every reasoning man be willing to resist his instinctive and his effeminate dread of suffering, and expose his sinful soul to this "ire," because it is the ire of law and righteousness?

Let us, then, for a moment, look at the argument for this sort of resolute temper in the public mind towards the strict and cogent representations of the pulpit.

1. In the first place, upon the general principles of propriety and fitness, ought not the sacred audience, the assembly that has collected upon the Sabbath day, and in the sanctuary of God, to expect and prepare for such distinctively Biblical representations of God and themselves as have been spoken of? The secular week has been filled up with the avocations of business, or the pursuits of science and literature, and now when the distinctively religious day and duties begin, is it not the part of consistency to desire that the eternal world should throw in upon the soul its most solemn influences, and that religious truth should assail the judgment and the conscience with its strongest energy ? Plainly if the religious interests of man are worth attending to at all, they are worth the most serious and thorough attention. This Sabbatical segment of human life, these religious hours, should be let alone by that which is merely secular or literary, in order that while they do last, the purest and most strictly religious influences may be experienced. A man's salvation does not depend so much upon the length of his religious experience and exercises, as upon their thoroughness. A single thoroughly penitent sigh wafts the soul to the skies, and the angels, and the bosom of God. A single hearty ejaculation,

"Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," not only lifts the soul high above the region of agony, but irradiates the countenance with the light of angelic faces. But such exhaustive thoroughness in the experience, is the fruit only of thoroughness in the previous indoctrination. He, therefore, who is willing to place himself under the religious influences of the Sabbath and the sanctuary, should be willing to experience the very choicest of these influences. He who takes pains to present himself in the house of God should expect and prepare himself for the most truthful and solemn of all messages. Professing to devote himself to the subject of religion, and no other, and to listen to the ministration of God's word, and no other, his utterance should be that of the Psalmist: "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness." Seating himself in the house of God, it should be with an expectation of plain dealing with his understanding, and with the feeling of that stern, yet docile auditor, whose uniform utterance before the preacher was, "Now let the word of God come." We lay it down, then, as a maxim of fitness and self-consistency, that the public mind ought ever to expect and require from the public religious teacher, the most distinetively religious, and strictly Biblical exhibitions of truth upon the Sabbath day, and in the house of God. Other days, and other convocations, may expect and demand other themes, and other trains of thought, but the great religious day of Christendom, and the great religious congregation, insists upon an impression bold and distinct from the world to come. "He has done his duty, now let us do ours," was the reply of Louis XIV. to the complaint of a fawning and dissolute courtier that the sermon of Bourdaloue had been too pungent and severe. There was manliness and reason in the reply. The pulpit had discharged its legitimate function, and irreligious as was the grand monarch of the French nation, his head was clear and his judgment correct.

If, now, the auditor himself, of his own free will, adopts this maxim, and resolutely holds his mind to the themes and trains of thought that issue from the word of God, a blessing and not a curse will come upon him. Like the patient smitten with leprosy, or struck with gangrene, who resolutely holds out the diseased limb for the knife and the cautery, this man shall find that good comes from taking sides with the divine law, and subjecting the intellect (for we are now pleading merely for the human understanding) to the searching sword of the truth. There is such a thing as common grace, and that hearer who is enabled by it, Sabbath after Sabbath, to overcome his instinctive fear of suffering, and to exercise a salutary rigour with his mind respecting the style and type of its religious indoctrination, may hope that common and prevenient grace shall become renewing and sanctifying grace.

Probably no symptom of the feeling and tendency of the popular