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find its own appropriate agencies, superintending by his providence, and aiding by the perpetual gift of the Holy Ghost, those agencies as they arise. We are, therefore, thrown back upon the simple question of suitableness and expediency in discussing the authority of this institution. We are willing to allow that the command of Jesus to his disciples-Go ye out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,' may and does mean something much wider than the office of the minister; that it may not mean that at all. We protest against its being exclusively applied to the apostles, or to their official successors, if it could be proved that they have any. We rest our defence of it on its naturalness, and fitness, and necessity. It will be granted that it is necessary to preach the gospel, i.e. in some way or other to attract men's attention to the Christian truth, and even to force that truth on their attention. But what is included in that hackneyed sentence, ' to preach the gospel?' Is it not a great deal more than to get up and tell men that they are sinners, and need a saviour, and that Jesus Christ is that Saviour? Have we not need of 'edification' after we are converted? Is there not a superstructure of religious truth built upon that one only foundation?' And must not that be expounded and enforced? Does not that process of edification (to say nothing about the vast variety of truth there is to present, whose immediate end is conversion'), require the continuous reiterated exposition of duty, incessant appeal and exhortation; successive exhibitions of the various aspects of a Christian's relation to God and to men? We contend, then, that this is a work not to be efficiently performed by mere extempore impulsive effusions of men, speaking simply from the heart; but one demanding careful thought, preparation, study. And if so, there must be men whose business it shall be, who shall 'give' themselves wholly to it; who shall be prepared for it, as men are prepared for every other life-work in which they are desired to succeed. It is quite true, that even with such a class of men, the work may be badly, inefficiently done, or partially neglected. But will the absence of such a provision ensure its being done better? In our judgment it would rather portend its not being done at all. And what so fitting time and circumstance for the preaching of the gospel in its various aspects, as when multitudes are gathered together, their sympathies quickened by their fellowship, and their minds prepared by leisure, and by the solemnities of prayer and praise, for seriously listening to the truth so preached? Let it be proved to us, that the great end can be reached in a better, more natural, more rational way, and we will then more seriously entertain the question of abandoning an agency, which for many centuries has been the means of incalculable good. Till then, we will content ourselves with trying to render that as efficient as it can be expected to become.

Aiming, then, at this, it is our present purpose to call our readers' attention to the power which the pulpit is calculated to exert, and to the requisite elements in the preacher for the exertion of that power.

In the midst of assembled hundreds of quiet and orderly persons, who have but just ceased the utterance of lofty praise, or solemn

prayer to God, there rises one man, the conductor of their previous devotions, their teacher and spokesman to the Majesty of heaven: their faces are turned towards him-their glances meet in his lips; he opens a book, a copy of which is in the hands of each, and turns their attention to some particular passage which he has chosen beforehand. They follow his direction; not turning wherever they will in the pages of that book-but obeying him, and waiting for his words. Whatever his message, or his errand, or his aim, his position at that moment is grand. For a moment, at least, he has those hundreds of human minds, keenly, delicately susceptible to the touch of another mind, aye, even to its very tones, to the silent speech of the gestures, as so many quivering needles waiting for his electric touch: as so many living germs waiting for the expanding, developing, fructifying power of his words. They hand up to him at that instant the reins of their several spirits for him to guide at his own will. What an opportunity if he have truth, wit, and strength to seize it! If with master-hand he grasp those reins, and assume irresistibly that offered control! If, from a mind well-charged with thought, with thought fired with ardour and longing to impart itself, he touch those thousand magnets, and make them vibrate with kindred intensity! How he may multiply his own thought and ardour! Has he been on some lofty height of contemplation, and discovered some broad landscape, some sublime and everlasting hill of truth? How gladly may he lead them up the same path, which his own loving labour has prepared and smoothed for their ascent. Has he been bending over some refreshing rivulet, sparkling, clear, gushing from the river that makes glad the city of God?' How joyously and cheeringly may he call all the weary to follow him, and receive renewal of strength. Has he on some solemn height of contemplation heard a trumpet call to do God's battle in the world? With what tender strength may he re-echo the call, and stir those thousand souls to move, a mighty host animated by one strong impulse. Has he in his lonely watch-tower seen the night-fire of a crouching foe? With what intensity of warning may he portray the danger, and turn them away! But oh! if he let it slip, what a miserable, pitiable man! Those magnets pointed by an inward impulse for a moment to him, through lack of power in him, swing back upon their pivots, and turn to their various earthly poles; this one to his ledger, that one to his love; another to his vacancy, another to her vanity. Those reins of being drop down again upon the hands that upheld them, and he preaches to the air.

What, too, is the book before him, and what his purpose in rising? He believes it to be God's book-the storehouse of religious truth for the world: that he has there the bread of life, and the water of life, and the cordial of life, and the medicine of life, and the light of life, and the armour of life, and the staff of life, and the solace of life, and the refuge of life, and the directory of life, and the charter of immortality. And his object is to dispense all these things to souls intensely needing them. He views the men before him as immortal souls, some in the trance of sin; some in the chains of lust; some in the sloughs

of despair; some in the vortex of giddy joy; some in the dungeon of the flesh; some in the soft grasp of seductive fiends; some groping in utter darkness; some hatching in their own breasts the devil's egg of doubt; some hungering and thirsting after truth; some longing for peace; some waiting for a comforter, a leader, a monitor, a captain, a quickener. And he believes that he has in the book what they all want, and is to be to one or other of them the medium of its conveyance. It is no mere curious speculation that he comes to expound, at which some may wonder and some laugh. It is no mere wonder of the world that he comes to describe in words that glow with the hues of reality. It is no mere scientific error of a past age that he comes to explode. It is no mere earthly El Dorado whose wealth he comes to explain, that he may send them on a mission after golden good. It is no imperial despotism he comes to denounce, that he may raise a spirit whose indignant throb shall overthrow the tyrant. It is no huge earthly imposture that he comes to unmask, with tones of withering contempt and scorching hate. It is no grand emancipation of a million swarthy slaves that he asks to have accomplished. His aim is greater, more intensely solemn, more deeply moving, more agonizing in sublimity than any and all of these. He stands over a fathomless abyss, where men are perpetually falling, and his mission is to snatch them as they fall: to turn the crowd away. He gazes upwards at glories ineffable, at countless starry crowns, and sapphire thrones, and he is to communicate the inspiration which shall start men on the path that leads to them. And he has God's word for it all. He may use the language of certainty. He may rebuke doubt. He may say to every man, I come not only as your brother, but as God's ambassador. I come to you from God. Spurn me if you will, but not my message: for that is God's.

Moreover, the majority of his hearers are ready to allow his claim; they admit the authority and the unparalleled importance of the truth he preaches to them; they do not need first to be convinced of its truth, and afterwards impressed by it. His work is, therefore, very simple and direct. Amid circumstances the most favourable, with truth the most indubitable, the most moving to others and inspiring to himself, the preacher rises to discharge himself of an almost dreadful responsibility. And he knows that he stands not alone, but that his own faithful effort will be accompanied by an energy subtler and mightier than his, in order that men may not receive the grace of God in vain.'

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This brief and rapid sketch of the position of the preacher cannot fail to convey the impression that it is one of the most commanding that the world affords. The position of a general haranguing his legions in sight of the hostile array, and on the eve of a battle which must decide the contest and terminate the campaign; or of the philanthropist-orator, fresh from scenes of tyranny and cruelty, perpetrated over a million brother-men, cannot compare in advantage, both as respects his own inspiration and the easy excitement of his hearers,

with that of the Christian teacher, who calls to daily certain victory over self and the world, and to a mission of emancipation from a thraldom in which THE WORLD is held, and is the mighty cause of all its

monster woe.

There is another side to the picture. The preacher is but a man; perhaps an ordinary man, compassed with infirmities; not necessarily a perfect man in morals or in mind, because he is a preacher. Few men are perfect till the varied discipline of earth has ripened them for heaven. It is enough that the preacher be somewhat raised above the average of actual Christian life, and above the average intelligence of those around him. The higher he is above them the better, provided he can stoop to their capacity and infirmity, and gently lift them up to the standard which is before his own eye. And God, in his providence, has never seen fit to make his instruments perfect before He has used them for his glory. Subject, then, to infirmities, both mental and moral, as other men are; furnished by Heaven with no amulet against temptation, no immunity from ills the flesh is heir to;' having to work their way to truth and holiness as other men have; and if, on the one hand, free from some dangers by the seclusion of their work, from the same cause exposed to others; one must not expect in the preacher the regularity and intensity of impression and expression which you might have in a machine. His heart may be heavy within him; darkness may for awhile encompass him about; he may have to stand before others to solace, to convince, to arouse, to guide, himself most needing comfort, or fresh from some perplexity of doubt, or with the scars of recent personal conflict, or feeling himself a wanderer in a trackless waste. And amongst his hearers there is no lack of obstacles to success. If they are not sceptical about what he utters, they are often what is worse-careless hearers; men who, from long familiarity, and habitual neglect of warning and appeal, have to listen to sermons as if they were all about the concerns of some other world; who hear appeals to men to do battle with the flesh, as if they were uttered to the hosts which Gabriel leads, urging them to exterminate the devil and all his angels; who smile most complacently and applaud most condescendingly the power of thought,' or felicity of description,' or 'happy illustration," whilst the preacher is warning them to 'flee from the wrath to come,' as if they had been auditors of an address to the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter, or of the farthest fixed star; who praise the delineation of virtues which they never mean to practise; and most meekly, with admirable patience, receive the condemnation of sins and practices which they never dream of ceasing to commit. These hearers are the great mountains of mud which make the preacher's progress so toilsome. These are the huge rocky boulders in the path of the Gospel's spread, which seem as if the flood of a forgotten age had launched them from a world where the type of man is, to be a living contradiction to himself. The absence of any mental life, too, in many of his hearers, makes his task a difficult one, whatever the loftiness or attraction of his theme. There are some regions of thought in which alone some of the most glorious and brightest aspects of truth are seen, into which he can never lead

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them. To say some of the most beautiful of his own thoughts to them would be to 'cast pearls before swine.' His instrument is truth -a spiritual thing; their susceptibilities are carnal. They are in all the stages of moral imperfection; some will have their faith staggered by the loftier truths; some will shrink away from the higher, nobler duties; some will misunderstand and misapply the purest and most perfect principles. On the other hand, others will be up to his own. mark, and will not be content to hear him merely echoing their own thoughts and experiences; they will want (at least, if they are wise) to be elevated and taught. Physical infirmities encompass many of them; and the preacher must exert a power to cope with these. The terrible and sinless drowsiness which overcomes some whose life of perpetual activity in the week all but irresistibly disposes them to sleep when they are at rest, must, if he be earnest, find a counteractive in the preacher's style and thoughts. Where it is not a real disease, I suppose it is possible for awhile to keep the sleepiest man awake; and the watcher for souls must at least attempt it. Others, whose world of daily life is intensely practical as well as active, and whose habits of thought and mental susceptibilities are completely formed and ruled by it, will need some studious effort at adaptation to their case, or they will, spite of themselves, be sent to sleep. The prose of their life is so terse, and telling, and stirring, that the preacher's poetry must have something more than tame beauty, and his prose something more than dry truthfulness, if they are to be moved. making every allowance for these drawbacks, we reassert the truth of our former inference, that his position is one of tremendous advantage for the exertion of power. The relation he sustains to his fellows, will be but a stimulus to him to overcome his own personal infirmities; he will aim to do it for others' sake, as well as his own; whilst the difficulties presented by his hearers will but fan the flame of his earnestness to touch them, by increasing his impression of the danger in which they stand.

But

The ideal of the pulpit, then, which we have given above, would lead us to expect that no other agency for moving men is at all equal to this in present power and success. That the press must be quite second to it, and walk far behind it. That the secular press especially, whatever its attractions in the eyes of some from the absence of religious topics, should be exerting much less power upon the thinkings and ways of the world, than the pulpit. Other things being equal, the living voice must be more forceful than a silent book.

What does the actual of the pulpit say then to our expectations? Is it the power of powers in the world? And, seeing that Christianity has the instrumentality almost to itself, is Christianity unequivocally the ruling power over opinion and habit in our midst? Let us see! We will leave now the region of the ideal altogether, and draw a few sketches from fact.

It is a fine summer's Sunday afternoon, and we have entered a neat chapel, in the midst of an agricultural district, where are now seated some 350 living souls. The singing ended, which by the way makes