seded by that rapid and general progress of human society that is based on good and wholesome laws, wisely administered by men who fear God, and hate evil. Senates will yet listen to the voice of God's messengers, and kings will respect their message. It will yet make kings nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers to God's Church. It will yet vanquish and annihilate armies, and beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, so that the nations shall learn war no more. As the Lord liveth, and his only begotten Son sits on the right hand of Majesty in the heavens, it shall yet pursue its conquests over ignorance, idolatry, error, and every species of immorality and crime, till the "skies drop down from above, and the earth opens and brings forth salvation;" till there shall be "new heavens and a new earth," because the Lord God "clothes his priests with salvation," and creates "Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy." "Not by might, nor by power:" man is a little thing, God is all. The pulpit is nothing, save when these elements of an unearthly influence gather around it. Heaven is the seat of power. The controversy is sharp and bitter; yet He "that hath the key of David, and openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth," will break in pieces the gates

of brass, and cut the bars of iron asunder." His Spirit shall disarm the strong man, dislodge the enemy from his fortresses, gather his honors on the field of a bloodless conquest, and find his reward in the purity and blessedness of a redeemed and regenerated world.

CHAPTER X.

GREAT OBJECT OF PREACHING.

THE third general object we have in view in illustrating the power of the pulpit, relates to the duty of ministers themselves. The inquiry is certainly an appropriate one, What course of conduct is incumbent on ministers themselves, in order to make full proof of the power with which the pulpit is invested?

The constituent elements of this power are more than human, yet are they intrusted to men. It is no infringement upon the Divine prerogative to affirm, that the preacher himself has an agency in carrying the designs of the pulpit into effect. If he is a mere blower of the Gospel trumpet, he ought to know how to blow it; his own heart must be in sweet accordance with the glad tidings which he utters, and his fingers trained to sweep the strings of the sacred lyre. It is a mighty trust which is committed to him. He has something to do in the work which the pulpit accomplishes; he himself is employed in giving direction to this

great moral machinery. He is not a mere au tomaton, set up in the sanctuary for show; a something for men to look at, and then go away and talk about, as they would about the acts, and scenes, and persons, of a dramatic exhibition. It is not enough that he go through the labor of preparing two or three discourses a week; and then, when the Sabbath bell calls him, repair to the house of God, and with all sobriety and decency deliver them to the people of his charge, in the name and by the authority of his divine Master. His work is not done then; it may be it is not truly begun. Nor may he, if this is all that he does, soothe his conscience with the thought that though his pulpit be powerless, and his hearers are not saved, “he has delivered his own soul." The Gospel ought not to lose its energy in his hands ; rather ought his ministrations to be such, and so fortified and adorned, as to develop and express that energy, to the glory of God, and the salvation of men.

A broad field here opens upon us, did we purpose to traverse it. Our course is a limited one, and must exclude many topics, for the purpose of dwelling on the few. No man of evangelical views hesitates to affirm that those who occupy the pulpit should be men of respectable talents, and "apt to teach;" nor that they should be able and thoroughly edu

cated men, fitted by their intellectual furniture for the exigencies of the Church and the world; nor that they should be orthodox men, and fearless advocates of God's truth. These qualifications cannot be too thoroughly urged, and insisted on: where they are wanting, the pulpit is shorn of its strength.

"I am

This is not all that the pulpit demands. It must have something more than this, or it can never exert its appropriate influence. Just before Paul was about to be led forth from his prison at Rome to the scaffold, among other paternal and divinely-inspired counsels, he uttered many of deep interest to the ministry of reconciliation. He himself had struggled hard, and was just about to finish his course. He had contended honorably and lawfully, and was in daily expectation of his crown. now," says he, "ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand." Timothy was young; he had just put on the armor; and it was a most seasonable and every way fitting injunction for such an one as "Paul the aged" to say to him, "Do the work of an evangelist; make full proof of thy ministry." These general remarks, though we cannot enforce them as we desire to do, deserve at least the following illustrations.

The first thought which suggests itself on this branch of our subject is the importance of