The Pulpit and its Handmaids. MONEY.-Money can only do for Religion what it does for Art-it can furnish the paint, the brush, the studio; but the genius to create a breathing beauty on the canvas, it cannot supply. The true evangelizing genius, without which churches, colleges, and books are so much cumbrous machinery, no wealth can purchase. THE office of love is always that of a priest, evermore presenting offerings at the shrine of its object. LIFE is a moral market. In it we are to carry on a moral merchandise for God. ONE TALENT.-Though you can do but little, remember that the " great globe" itself-the universe-is but a combination of littles. Who built the Coral Islands, laid their foundation in the abysses of the deep, and spread out their landscapes on the ocean's heaving breast? Work, though your power is but the power of an insect. DON'T LIVE IN CREEDS.-Is it reasonable to suppose that he whose work it is to study, and sound out, all the notes in redemption's infinite scale of music, should be everlastingly ringing the few imperfect notes that you have acquired ?—notes, too, whose blendings, as yet, make no melody that can charm the world. RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUALISM.-I would have each seed, as now, even to the tiniest of them all, produce a form peculiar to itself, and thus preserve for ever the infinite variety of our 66 landscape; I would have evermore one star to differ from another star in glory," and thus preserve the power of the nightly firmament to inspire me by the boundless variety of its lustrous dome. Who would have all minds think alike? GOOD WORKS.-Character is made up of habits, and habits are made of acts; and it is only when the idea or impression is translated into an earnest act, that it becomes a real power. RELIGIOUS truth, if left to remain in the form of ideas in the mind, is only, to the man, like the raindrop upon the leaf it may glisten like a diamond in the sun and add a moment's brilliance to the object, but it is of no service to the tree; but when ideas are translated into deeds, they are like the raindrops penetrating the roots, and bearing new energy into every branch. SOCIETY.-The soul shut up from society, is like the seed shut up from soil, and air, and dew, and light. HAPPINESS, like its highest emblem-light, is diffusive. SUSPICION.-It is a law, that the less of the true a man has in him, the more suspicious he is of others; and the more he is under the influence of evil, the more disposed he is ever to wear the mask, and to injure others in the dark. ERROR. Error frequently brings out the latent energies and glories of truth, as steel brings fire from the flinty rock. THE GOOD TIME COMING.Deep in the heart of the world is the sentiment that there are bright days in store for the world, that Eden shall bloom again, and that the crown shall once more encircle the brow of the race. MISERY.-Misery is an асcident, happiness is a necessity; -for Christ's being is a necessity. Misery had a beginning; happiness is eternal. Misery is local; happiness is universal. The misery of the universe, as compared with the happiness, is only as one blighted leaf in an immeasurable forest. LOVE.-Love alone can interpret the history of love-love alone receive the revelations of love. Love is the "unction from the Holy One, enabling us to understand all things." CHRIST MUST REVEAL HIMSELF. -As neither stars, nor moon, nor all the artificial lights of the universe, can fully reveal the sun, so neither can any ministry, in heaven or earth, fully reveal Christ to the soul. GOD ALONE CAN SAVE.-Any power can destroy. An insect, a breath of wind, may destroy a nation; but no power but that of God can restore the life of a blade of grass. THE DIVINE IDEA.-The idea of God is the vivifying sun of the soul. You may put the acorn into good soil, give it plenty of air and rain; it will never rise to the majestic oak if you shut out from it the sun. And whatever else you give humanity, if you give it not the great idea of God, it will never rise to virtue, to glory, and to bliss. THE universe to a holy being is the tongue of God. A LIE.-A lie has no power, only as it wears the garb of truth. BELIEF.-All moral character is built upon, and ever modified by, beliefs. The soul that has a firm and living faith in her theology, will be to heretical thoughts, even in their most violent form, as the moon to the ocean in the fiercest battles of her billows: she will look calmly down, and with majestic silence move on her way. HONEST doubt is better than traditional faith. PREDESTINATION.-Philosophy finds predestination everywhere in nature-in the floating dewdrop and the heaving ocean; in the motions of atoms and the revolutions of stars; in the organization, growth, and decay of every species of plant and every class of sentient life. CHARACTER. Character that out of which will flame the hell, or bloom the paradise of every man. is The IDEAS.-What so mighty as ideas? They are the seed of character and the soul of history. As they move, the world moves. The individual idea sways the individual man. national idea is the national sovereign. All the arts that beautify and bless our lives are but ideas that have taken form -plants that have sprung from the germs of thought. PEACE.-True peace is the peace of a quickened, active conscience, that has done battle with lusts and evil habits, won the victory, and obtained the throne of the soul; ruling all by the harmonious will of God. CONFIDENCE in God is evermore the foundation of true courage. TRUE peace of soul is not the peace of a stagnant lake, but the peace of a flowing river, too deep to be rippled, too strong to be resisted. MOTION.-Creation is like a flowing river; there is not a particle at rest, and all move simultaneously towards the boundless. SIN HARD TO DIE.-An atom may kill a giant, a word may break the peace of a nation, a spark burn up a city; but it requires earnest and protracted struggles to destroy sin in the soul. GOD's method of helping man is through the wise and right use of his own faculties; and the man of the true spirit learns this, and acts accordingly. IDEAS.-Ideas are our rudders. As the soul glides along the warm and swelling sea of feeling, it can only be turned to new points of the moral compass by them. DOCTRINE AND PRECEPT.— Doctrines and precepts are rays from the same eternal sun of truth; the former, however, throwing their radiance upwards-revealing the vast heavens that encircle us, and impressing us with ideas of infinitude; the latter flowing down upon our earthly path, and guiding our feet in the way of life. The Preacher's Confidential CouncilBoom. [There arise in the pulpit and pastoral experience of almost every minister certain questions of casuistry and doctrine which he would not care to have opened in a general journal, but upon which he would like the judgment of his brethren. This department will be available to such. Ministers of all denominations are invited to it.] HYMNOLOGY. "SIR,-Who am I that I should contend with SOLOMON? Before the imperial sage it behoves me to bow, blush, and vanish from the scene! He charges me with 'sarcasm,' 'misquotation,' 'misconception,' and 'illogical inference,' and I know not what beside. I take it all in good part, as it becomes me. "One of his great objections to my hymnal criticism is, that my principle would lead to the removal from our hymn-books of some of our best hymns, such as, 'How bright are those who in glory shine,' 'Who are these in bright array?' 'On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,' 'There is a land of pure delight,' etc. These are not hymns at all. They are mawkish sentimentalism run into rhyme. The essence of a hymn is an appeal to God either in the language of gratitude, penitence, submission, or adoration. A hymn should deal as directly with God as a prayer. The psalms and hymns and spiritual songs' of which the Apostle speaks, are those that make melody in the heart TO the Lord, not melody in the heart to glorious spirits that shine, to 'Jordan's stormy banks,' to 'a land of pure delight,' and to everything, in fact, but the One Being who should fill the horizon of the soul in all worship. His philosophic majesty is pleased to say that he would be glad if I would put my 'knife into hymns that are objectionable.' Were I to do this, Mr. Editor, I should be cutting away until the end of my life, and sink your valuable periodical with excrescences. It was said by the late Rev. W. Webster, M.A., Editor of the Greek Testament, that in the 'Congregational Hymn Book,' perhaps one of the best hymnals extant, 'out of the thousand there is scarcely more than two hundred that a man of culture, conscience, or reflection would think of singing. I take up a book called the 'Christian Hymnal,' which is just published, and the first hymns I open my eyes on are the two following: 6 "Nothing, either great or small, Nothing, sinner, no; Jesus did it, did it all, Long, long ago. When He, from His lofty throne, Stooped to do and die, Everything was fully done, Hearken to His cry: "It is finished!" Yes, indeed, Finished every jot: Weary, working, plodding one, Wherefore toil you so? Cease your doing; all was done Long, long ago. Till to Jesus' work you cling, By a simple faith, Doing is a deadly thing, Doing ends in death. Cast your deadly doing down, Stand in Him, in Him alone, "What sacred fountain yonder springs And all our covenant blessings brings? What mighty sum paid all my debt, What stream is that which sweeps away My sins, just like a flood, Nor lets one guilty blemish stay? 'Tis Jesus' precious blood. What voice is that which speaks for me, What theme, my soul, will best employ Thy harp before thy God, And make all heaven to ring with joy? "The doctrine of these two hymns is at once unphilosophic, unscriptural, and pernicious; namely, that a sinner has nothing to do in the way of salvation but believe what was done for him eighteen hundred years ago. That salvation is to be obtained through faith in Christ, is a Scriptural doctrine that I reverently recognise and gratefully accept. But in these two compositions there is a wretched and pernicious perversion of this truth. What thoughtful man who knows anything about modern Christendom does not feel that the wretched cry from certain pulpits, Only believe, only believe' is a cant-popular it is true, but derogatory to the God of love, and obstructive to the progress of true spiritual knowledge and the real growth of souls in power, freedom, and moral nobility. Yours, etc., 66 "CLERICUS." |
