Boldness accords with the character of the christian revelation. Bold, beyond comparison, are the spirit and manner of the Bible-its descriptions of natural objects-its striking delineations of hell, and heaven, and God. Bold are its moral portraitures-its reproofs and rebukes for sin-its denunciations of woe to the guilty-its demands of universal and unconditional repentance-its threatenings, pointing down to the chambers of death its promises, revealing the gates of life.

The best preachers have been singular for boldness. Such were the Edwardses and the Tennents of our own land. Such were Baxter, and Whitefield, and the Wesleys of Great Britain. Such were Knox, and Luther, and Zuinglius, of an earlier era. Such were "the noble army of martyrs," and "the company of the holy apostles." Such a preacher was Paul. Behold him at Athens. He stands on the summit of Mars Hill. The lofty Acropolis, with its crowning Parthenon, towers behind him. The Egean, gemmed with green islands, stretches away in the distance before him. The splendid city of Athens, with her temples, and altars, and images, lies at his feet. An immense throng of Athenians have gathered around him. He stands among them, but he stands alone-a barbarian, a Jew, a stranger in a city of strangers. He had come from a distant land in fulfilment of a commission from the Saviour of men. He had come to a city, whose laws denounced death to the man who should introduce a foreign deity. He now stands before a most august assembly-a body of men venerable alike for their learning, their experience, and their years;-before the very tribunal, which had recently condemned the purest and most patriotic of their own philosophers for alleged hostility to their religious rites. He stands to answer for a similar crime. He had preached among them "Jesus and the resurrection ❞—a doctrine utterly hostile to their civic grandeur, their state policy, their proudest and most cherished superstitions. Will the tribunal, which spared not their own Socrates, now spare the stranger? The question enters not his mind. He comes forward to this tribunal, not to retract his obnoxious doctrines, but to reassert them; to bind and rivet them with still greater power upon the judgment and the conscience. He lifts his arm to speak, and it is with the majesty of one on whom rests the Spirit of the living God. He exhibits that last decisive energy of a rational courage, which confides in the Supreme Power

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a courage which makes a man intrepidly dare every thing that can attack him within the whole sphere of mortality—which would make him retain his purpose unshaken, amid the ruins of the world.

ARTICLE V.

THE EFFECTIVE PREACHER-CHARACTERISTICS AND

CULTURE.

By Rev. George Shepard, Prof. of Sacred Rhetoric, Theol. Sem. Bangor, Me.

Or Paul and Barnabas it is said, when laboring in Iconium, in a synagogue of the Jews, that they "so spake that a great multitude, both of the Jews and also of the Greeks, believed." They preached effectively. Their style as preachers, as well as their spirit, had much to do with the result. The same remark holds good in respect to all preachers. Much, everywhere, and at all times, depends upon the man, intellectually and prudentially, as well as spiritually. This sentiment is sustained, not only by what we read in the word of God, but also by what we see in his providence,-in his actual withholding or dispensing success. We discover that certain men have been distinguished for success. We are prepared to say, that it was not altogether, because they possessed more piety, or exhibited more truth, than some others, who have been less successful. It was, in part, because they were more skilful in presenting the truth. They drew attention to it; they produced conviction by it. The Spirit brought many home to God.

Let it here be distinctly and strongly averred, that no fitness or skill in the presentation, will avail to a saving result, unless the Holy Ghost accompanies and gives efficiency to the word. Gabriel may preach, with the eloquence of an angel, through his whole immortality, and without the Spirit, not a conversion would be effected. While we say this, with the utmost strength and sincerity, we repeat the sentiment, that very much depends, in the securing of success, upon the preacher's skill. Indeed, facts on every hand admonish us, to study the art of preaching,

with the utmost intentness. Skill, in this work, seems to be almost as important, as if skill were the efficient power.

It is proposed, in this Article, in the first place, to point out some of the characteristics of the truly skilful and effective preacher.

Preparatory to designating some of the prominent elements of the effective preacher, it may be premised, that, by the phrase, is not meant one, who, by mere pleasantness of voice and elegance of style and address, can captivate a luxurious and accomplished auditory; but one, who can reach and stir the conscience of such an auditory; who can plant arrows in refined, as well as rustic, hearts; one, in short, who can convince, agitate, persuade, men in all their states of tenderness and obduracy, roughness and culture.

It is indispensable that the preacher understand, 1. The material he is to work with, namely, truth, in its vast and various. relations; 2. The material he is to work upon, that is, man, in his complex and mysterious attributes.

The effective preacher, then, is a clear and sound theologian. He has a thorough, theoretic knowledge of the whole field of religious doctrine. The properties of the Divine nature, the principles of the Divine administration, the mysterious method of mercy by the cross, the grounds of obligation and duty, lie familiarly in the mind, and are employed as the basis, the fundamental requisite, in all efficient preaching. A minister may, if he chooses, confine himself to the utterance of more prudential considerations, to the exposition and pressure of the code of a secular morality; a brief experiment, however, will satisfy him, that his words all go to the winds. He may do more; he may declaim fervently and move the passions; he may astonish the people by his soarings upward and outward upon eternity and immensity; if his sentiments and sentences are the creation of his own fancy, the feelings enkindled by them, and the goodness produced, will pass away like the morning cloud and the early dew. The reason is, he has not used the instrument, which God has put into the hands of his ministers, for the purpose of accomplishing the glorious things, he has ordained. That instrument is truth, the sword which the Spirit employs in all his searching operations. When wielded with sure aim, it will, at first, be painful; but in the end, it will achieve benignant results. In order to be thus wielded, it must be understood. When rightly understood and appreciated it will be sig

nificantly employed. The clear, comprehensive theologian will throw out truth in luminous and heavy masses. His messages will go forth with authority, because they are made up, not of the pretty and sweet things of man's invention; but of the solid and immense things of God's revealing. He preaches all truth; even the points the world have called inexplicable, and stumbled against, and quarrelled with. They being in the Bible, be puts them into his sermons; and though by multitudes they are dreaded, and most hostilely regarded, they sometimes break very hard hearts, and bring down very high looks.

Not only all truth, but truth in its harmony and just proportions, will be presented, when there is this clear view of the whole field ;-not an inordinate prominence and pressing of favorite points; not a clashing and warring of points; but every position having its true relative importance, and every single position, coinciding, dwelling in love, with every other position. Nothing can be more fatal to a preacher's influence and success, than through ignorance, or narrow and distorted views of doctrine, to have parts of the same discourse, or different discourses in the same vicinity, standing to each other in a belligerent attitude. One paragraph undoes the impression of another. One sermon nullifies another. The hearer looks on in amazement and confusion, and resolves to put off his reconciliation with God, till the preacher becomes better reconciled with himself.

Again; In a clear, broad view of truth, its greatness and majesty are seen, and an inspiriting confidence if its efficacy is awakened and sustained. The preacher of this sort, who grasps truth in its amplitude, and sees it in its high authority, has no misgivings from this source, when he stands up in its advocacy;-no apologies to make in preface of his appeals. He utters his message in freeness and fervor, with the belief that there is an importance, a dignity, a 'worth attached to it, which the most reckless must respect; and a power inherent, which the most obdurate must feel. His deep felt confidence in his weapon, his bold relief of doctrine, does often arrest attention, and by the Spirit's aid subdue the heart, when a doubtful and faltering utterance would have been met with the most vacant indifference, if not with positive scorn.

Knowledge is power; truth is power. The preacher has power, other things being equal, just in proportion to the amount of truth he has compassed and brought under the mas

tery of his faculties, so that he can use it at pleasure, for conviction, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness.

Let it here be added, that we speak of truth, not merely as lodged in the head, but lodged and living in the heart. The effective preacher has not simply clear, theoretic knowledge; he has especially a deep, experimental knowledge of the grand system of doctrine. It has all been anthenticated in the conflicts and triumphs of his own breast. He speaks what he does know; he testifies what he has seen and felt. He must so speak, if he would speak with effect. If he does so speak, it will be with effect; even though in other respects, his talents and acquisitions be of a secondary order; for he is prepared to give graphic and vivid pictures, instead of dry, dead abstractions. Indeed, with the scenes of his past history fresh in his mind, he cannot help giving such pictures. Speaking of sin as one who has tasted its bitter fruits and been chained to its detested loathsomeness; of repentance, as one who has bled beneath its anguish, and been blest with its peace; of faith, as one who has been favored with its visions; of love, as one who has kindled and exulted with its flame; of heaven, as one who has foretasted its joys; of hell, as one who has looked into its caverns of wrath and woe, he must speak with an accuracy, a strength, a fulness and descriptiveness of meaning, which gives glowing reality to all he touches, and body and power to all he presents. Such a man does not make a sermon, simply because the hour is coming, when it will be convenient for him to have a sermon ; but because his heart is full of something to say; because it is heaving and glowing with indwelling masses of the vivid material. He cannot refrain and be comfortably at rest; for the material accumulates; the mass still enlarges and glows; the fire kindles and burns in his frame; so that he is compelled to pour forth the swelling and struggling contents.

The sermons of the effective preacher are taken especially out of the heart, as all good sermons must be. The effective preacher having a heart of varied and profound experience, every weapon of truth has tried its temper there; and there he goes for his weapons. Truth may be taken from the head, but it must be carried through the heart, before it is imbued with the spirit and with power. The preacher who has not felt and lived his materials, but who gleans them from every exterior quarter, and of course takes them on trust, will find them often devoid of interest or efficacy. If he picks up arrows, which