them of the place of danger or of safety; no city, no town, no sweet and peaceful village invited them to a place of repose. The smoke ascended indeed on the hills-but it rose from the cabin of the wandering and barbarous savage; and the sound of welcome was not heard on the shore. They came to the bleak and barren coast of New England. Heaven-directed, they entered-not by accident-the only place where safety could have been found-where the everlasting mountains seemed to decline toward them, and to stretch out their arms far into the sea to embrace them. On board that vessel the May Flower-was the germ of this great nation of that nation whose vessels now whiten every sea, and to whom every river, and lake, and bay, and ocean of the world are open. Like Columbus, they came with hearts filled with gratitude to God-and on the rock of Plymouth, they erected the altar and the cross. On board that humble bark was formed the solemn compact which has since gone into all our constitutions—and which contains the elements of liberty. They came, a race of hardy, and virtuous, and holy men; they came, bearing the elements of liberty, and science, and law, and pure religion, that they might here have a home. They came with the Bible; with the love of sound learning, and of public faith and morals. Like that humble barkwith the same principles, and feelings, and views which reigned there, let our vessels-driven by the wind, or impelled by steam-visit all the world. Let them go as fit representatives of the land discovered by Columbus, and planted by the Pilgrims. Let them take the Bible and the press; let them go to scatter the blessings of religion and liberty; let the pennant at the head of the tall mast, as she is seen on the deep, be hailed as the harbinger of all that can bless the nations. Back to Western Asia and to India; to the mouths of the Ganges, the Indus, and the Euphrates; to the Red Sea and the Nile; let American vessels yet bear

the fruits, not only of our industry, but of our virtue, literature, and religion. Let them carry the principles by which all that now desolate region may be clothed with fertility; by which freedom shall visit the land of oppression; by which its cities may rise beautiful like our own, and far surpassing in moral worth and loveliness those which time has crumbled into ruins-making it again the Eden of the world.

X.

REESE

UNIVERSIT:

CALIFORNI

[BIBLICAL REPOSITORY, 1846.]

The Relation of Theology to Preaching.

WITH reference to its practical influence and value, theology may be contemplated from many points of view. We may approach the Bible under the guidance of the ordinary laws of interpreting language, and inquire what theology is as contemplated there, without reference to its observed adaptation to human nature, and to its effects in the world. We may approach it, as viewed in its effects on mankind, and ask what has been its influence, how it has been modified in the changes occurring in philosophy and in society, or how it has originated or modified those changes. We may approach it by directing our inquiries primarily into the nature of man, and prosecuting the inquiry through that medium, making mental philosophy the basis, and asking what it does to develope the powers of our nature, and to elevate us in the scale of being. Or we may contemplate it from the pulpit, and ask ourselves what is the theology which experience has shown to be best adapted to the ends of preaching, and which we can preach with a hope of success. In the first case we look at it indeed speculatively and abstractly, yet with certainty as to truth, if we study the Bible with a right spirit; in the second, we learn from its effects on the world what may be presumed to have been the theology which God did or did not intend to teach; in the third, we judge that certain forms of theology which have always come in conflict with the laws of the mind, and the principles of just philosophy, cannot be the theology which the

author of the human soul designed to reveal; and in the fourth, we place ourselves in the pulpit, and look around on society, and ask what may be preached so as to answer the ends of preaching-so that men will perceive it to be true, and so that they will be converted to God.

This is the point of view from which we propose now to contemplate theology. We wish to make the pulpit a point of observation from which to look out on the world, that we may obtain some lessons which may be of value to those who expect to occupy that position through life.

A natural arrangement of the thoughts which we wish to suggest, will be to consider the kinds of theology which cannot be preached, and then that which can be; or to show that there are certain kinds of theology which are not adapted to the pulpit, and then what kind of theology may be preached with success.

Under the first of these heads, we notice three kinds of theology which have prevailed, and which to a great extent still prevail in the world. These are briefly the following: that which, whatever beauty of sentiment or philosophy it may have, does not furnish the proper themes for the eloquence of the pulpit; that which contemplates the propagation of religion mainly by other means than preaching; and that which men are constrained to abandon in preaching.

Of the first of these kinds of theology, it may be observed, that, however it may seem to answer some of the ends of religion, it is not fitted to inspire the eloquence which we naturally expect in the pulpit; and when it is incorporated into a system designed to be preached, it lacks the highest elements of oratory which theology in its best sense contains. We refer to that form of religion which repels what are regarded as the darker and sterner features of Christianity as it has been usually received in the world. This theology is founded on the beautiful and grand in the

works of nature, or in the scenes of redemption. It finds pleasure in the contemplation of the starry heavens; of hills, and streams, and lakes; of the landscape and of the ocean; and is willing in these things to admire and praise the existence and perfections of the Creator. In the contemplation of these things, there is no reluctance to admit the existence of a God, or to dwell on his natural perfections; for in the placid beauty of a landscape, in the silvery murmuring of a rivulet, and in the opening of a rose-bud, no attribute of the Deity is revealed on which the mind even of the gay and the wicked is unwilling to dwell. This religion is found in all the departments of poetry, and in all the conceptions of mythology. It abounded most among the Greeks, a people who carried the love of the beautiful to a higher eminence than any other, and who embodied it in their unequalled works of art. Over each of the works of nature; over every element, and every event; over every tree, and flower, and breeze, and waving harvest-field, and fountain, they supposed a divinity to preside; and all the skill of the chisel, and the harmony of numbers, were employed to embody and perpetuate their conceptions.

This is still the theology of poetry and romance; and over a large portion of the world, claiming particularly to be ranked among the refined and the intellectual, it yet maintains its dominion. The names, indeed, which were used by that refined and elegant people with so much propriety to express their conceptions, are employed no more. Statues of breathing marble no longer embody their conceptions, but the ideas of virtue and of man, of the influence of religion on the character, and of the prospects which it opens in the future world, differ little from theirs. The heaven to which they look, differs little from the Elysian fields. That which is needful to prepare for that world, differs little from the virtues which a refined Athenian deemed necessary to fit