whom this or that formulary was provided for his use, he regards only the propriety of the thoughts and the solemnity of his words; he is conscious of his own duty to adopt those thoughts, and to respect those words; and, actuated by the example of the fellow-worshippers who surround him, he adds earnestness to sincerity. He acts from himself— for himself; and he is protected from the ignorance or errors of the minister by the weighty contents of the Liturgy, intended for the benefit of himself and his pious associates.

Amidst the occupations and pleasures of the world, preaching is indispensably necessary for the generality of mankind, who have few other opportunities for acquiring religious knowledge. But let not the Gospel itself be confounded with interpretation. Let not the preacher claim to himself that regard and that submission which are due only to Christ and his inspired followers. Let not preaching be considered as the most vital part of our duty in the sanctuary; nor let it be supposed that, by hearing ever so attentively, or believing ever so firmly, we can expiate, I do not say the total disuse, but, I am compelled once more to say, the negligent use of prayer. I state the plain fact; and yet I am aware that the teacher and the hearer are wily enough to disclaim the principle, while no sensible and impartial observer of their gestures, their countenance, their words, and their actions, can for a moment mistake their real predilection for the sermon, in which certain favourite notions are extolled by the illuminated champion of faith and

grace, and defended against the ignorant and presumptuous advocate for good works, and therefore the unholy assailant of vital Christianity.

Upon these distinctions and these cautions I am led, by the unusual and portentous aspect of these eventful times, to insist the more earnestly, because it is notorious that, in those parts of our worship which precede the sermon, and which certainly are not of unequal usefulness, teachers of a certain class read the established forms of devotion with little sensibility, and their hearers neither give, nor are encouraged to give, much attention. Now we are told that in the time of Chrysostom there was a popular proverb, "better the sun should not shine than Chrysostom should not preach." But this celebrated teacher did not suffer his vanity to delude his understanding or to slacken his devotion. He did not, like the Pharisees of old, affect to be called Rab, Rabbi, Rabboni; nor, like boasters in later ages, did he arrogate to himself peculiar and extraordinary aids for the knowledge of truths which other men could not discuss, or the display of piety which other men could not attain; on the contrary, he was afflicted to observe that the people were more ready to listen to his sermon than to the word of God himself. To the authority of Chrysostom let me add the example of Calvin himself. He certainly did not undervalue the importance of his own opinions, or the extent of his own abilities to defend and inculcate them, and yet, rescued for the moment by genuine good sense from chimerical theory and polemical dogmatism, he, in reference

to the text, represented prayer as the nobler part of Christian worship, when he expressly describes "the House of God" as "the House," not of preaching, but "of prayer."

But further, and on my part, I must confess that, in the choice of subjects, as well as in the manner of treating them, I have many painful recollections, and many alarming anticipations, when I look to the teachers who set so high an estimation on their sermons delivered by themselves. It has, indeed, ever been my anxious wish, that controversial discourses should be employed only before hearers who are furnished with ample stores of classical or philosophical knowledge: who are habitually practised in balancing probabilities, historical and moral; who are accustomed to explore the motives and consequences of human action under the various modifications of customs, laws, climates and religion; and who have carefully examined the most judicious theories on the structure of the human mind.

It is my firm conviction also, that before every mixed or unlearned audience, the plain duties of temperance, modesty, diligence, resignation, honesty, veracity, humility, placability and piety, illustrated again and again by the dignified phraseology of Scripture, and enforced by the awful sanctions of future rewards and punishments, as prepared by that Being who "spake, as never man spake," are more proper for the pulpit than topics known under the technical terms of consubstantiability specific and numerical, hypostatic union, eternal filiation, eternal procession, actual regeneration by

special grace, possible justification by faith only, supralapsarianism and sublapsarianism, and other phrases familiar, I grant, to the polemic, dear to the bigot, and animating to the multitude, but uncouth to the ear and unedifying to the heart of many well-informed and well-disposed Christians. "The Temple of the Lord," said the Jews, as we read in Jeremiah, "the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these." In the same spirit do some of our contemporaries exclaim, " The Gospel, the Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus is here, and here only." Perhaps, my brethren, it were unkind and uncourteous to apply to these misguided declaimers those indignant terms, in which Jeremiah speaks of his countrymen, "Trust not in lying words." cannot be charged with indecorum or harshness, when I recommend to these accusers of my ecclesiastical brethren a little more charity to their fellowChristians, and a little more distrust in themselves and much more discipline from knowledge, as the corrective of headstrong zeal and frantic enthusiasm.

But I

Far be it from me to invade the sacred rights of toleration, which leaves every man who considers himself a Christian to the guidance of conscience in the profession of religious doctrines, and the adoption of religious ceremonies. I mean, therefore, not to censure any individuals, in any class of believers who are without the pale of the national establishment. But I confess myself dissatisfied, and even terrified, when I find that discourses from our own pulpits are permitted to gain

such an ascendancy over the minds of men, in a Church where, like our own," the House of God" is, really and professedly, a " House of Prayer."

In the course of gradual changes that were made to furnish the people of this country with materials for worship, after their separation from the Church of Rome, our service now stands before you in its fifteenth stage of excellence. From time to time it has been enlarged or amended by the labours of the best educated scholars and the best informed theologians. It has been enriched with the choicest stores which could be found in the public services of the Church of Rome, the Church of Greece, and some foreign Protestant Churches, or in the writings of the most learned and eloquent Fathers. To the discerning critic it constitutes, like the Bible, a work in which the most valuable properties of the language itself are preserved; and to the sincere believer it presents almost every topic which can exercise his faith or interest his affections. Possible, indeed, it is, nay, probable, that after the acknowledged improvements of the human mind in criticism and ethics, retrenchment or correction might in some few instances be introduced-not, I grant, by the recluse, who passionately clings to expressions which are obscured by long disuse, and into which antiquity cannot infuse the charms of mellowness or dignity-not by the sciolist, who is suddenly fascinated by words which are dainty and neoteric-not by the blustering and perhaps mercenary gladiator in theology-not by the morose bigot-not by the impetuous zealot—not by the airy