of schools and churches to the wilderness; if, when they go from the sound of the Sabbath bell, they forget the Sabbath, and the Bible, and the place of prayer; if, when they leave the place where their fathers sleep in their graves, they forget the religion which sustained and comforted them, our sons are to follow them into the wilderness, and remind them of the commands of God. If they go for gold, they are to be followed with the admonitions of heavenly wisdom, and to be recalled to virtue and to God. None of them are to be suffered to go to to any fertile vale or prairie of the West without the institutions of the gospel; nor are they to be suffered to construct a hamlet, or to establish a village, or to build a city, that shall be devoted to any other god than the God of our fathers. By all the self-denials of benevolence; by all the force of persuasion; by all the power of argument; by all the remembrances of the early days of the republic, they are to be persuaded to plant there the Rose of Sharon, and to make the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to blossom as the rose. And that young man who makes choice of a profession, is to make this one of the grand elements in that choice, that this whole nation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is to be imbued with the gospel of Christ. It is to spread everywhere; and his talents are to contribute all they can be made to contribute to that end. We suggest but one other principle which should guide in the choice of a profession, and on that there is not time to enlarge. It is based on the fact that this world is to be converted to God. It is with reference to this, that the society which we are now permitted to address, has been formed. Amid all the uncertainties of the future; all that is dubious in regard to the revolutions and changes which are to take place on earth, this is fixed and settled. It is the only thing in the distant future in this world, on which the eye can repose without danger of mistake, for this has been fixed by the sure word of God's unchanging covenant and promise. Political sagacity can look but a little distance, and that only by uncertain conjecture, into future scenes. A thousand things which the keen eye of the Burkes and Cannings of the world cannot discover in the future, may modify anticipated changes, and render void the plans of the profoundest political sagacity. But no such unseen modifying causes can affect the predictions of Him who has foretold the conversion of the world. He saw the end from the beginning. He saw all the revolutions of states and empires. He saw all the plans of statesmen, and all the results of wars and revolutions; and he has made it a matter of public record, that the period is to come when "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert blossom as the rose;" when "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." In the divine purposes it is settled; in the promises of the everlasting God it is fixed; and the time shall arrive when shall "The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks" "Shout to each other, and the mountain tops The world is to be recovered to God. No matter how degraded it is—no matter how polluted-no matter how sunken; all its lands of pollution and defilement are to be made as lovely as the "sweetest village that smiles on a Scottish or New England landscape." No matter what it may cost; the purposes of God are to be fulfilled. No matter how many of our young men are to go forth, consecrated to this work, the nation must be willing that they should go and lay their bones on the banks of the Senegal or the Ganges-in burning sands or amid the snows of the North. No matter how many fall as martyrs, their places are to be supplied. If other Lymans and Munsuns are to fall by the hand of violence, Amherst and other colleges are to send forth those who will hail it as a privilege to tread in their steps, and to die, if God so will it, as they died. Let the heathen world become full of martyrs, and every vale be filled with the rough stones that mark the graves of murdered missionaries, or with graves which not even the humblest monument shall point out to the passing traveller, still the world is to be converted to God; and the work is to be pursued until the time shall come when even in those lands the same honour shall be rendered to the names of the murdered men which the world now cheerfully pays to the names of Ignatius and Polycarp, of Latimer, and of Cranmer. It is to be an elementary principle in the choice of a profession, that this world is to be converted to Jesus Christ. It is to form the basis on which that choice is to be made. It is to be one of the points which are assumed as true; and to promote that object is yet to be one of the main purposes which is to influence young men in making that choice. Whatever is needful for that is to be done; whatever would retard that -whatever would not in some way promote it, is to be deemed a course of life that is a departure from the divine purposes, and an object which lies out of the appropriate sphere of human effort. And the time will come at no distant period,—and should be now regarded as already come by every young man, —that no one has entirely correct views in the choice of his profession, who has not admitted it as an elementary and a leading principle in his choice, that all the miseries of men should be alleviated and will be alleviated by the prevalence of the gospel of Christ, and that his talents are to be consecrated in their appropriate sphere in augmenting human hap piness; in removing the evils of cruel laws, and degrading rites, and bloody institutions-of ignorance, and superstition, and pollution, throughout the entire world. Be it a fixed principle, that the light of truth, like that of a clear summer's morning, is yet to be diffused over all the darkened hills and vales of this world; that the banner of salvation is to float in broad and ample folds, "all covered o'er with living light," everywhere on earth; and that, under the influence of welldirected effort, every pagan temple is yet to be left without a priest, and every pagan altar without a sacrifice. XV. Practical Preaching.* THE subject to which your attention will be invited, at this time, is practical preaching. The design is so to discuss it as to present as far as possible a view of the preacher's power and province. In other words, we desire to consider the question, how may a preacher make the most of his office and influence in regard to the salvation of the world. In order to understand what is meant, it is necessary to distinguish this from two other kinds of discourse, which have often been deemed the appropriate province of the preacher. The first may be characterized as that which is contemplative, pious, and consoling. It rather assumes that there is a church to be edified, than that the mighty task is to be undertaken of recovering a church from a ruined world; rather that an edifice is reared which needs only that its proportions should be preserved; its beauty kept from defacings; than that a man is to enter amid ruins, to engage in rearing an edifice from the foundation. He who goes to this work, goes to speak words of consolation; to recount the privileges of those whom he addresses; to dwell with pious contemplations on their hopes, and their elevations over a less favoured portion of mankind. The aim of the preacher is not so much to convert, as to sanctify the soul; not so much to press the empire of God into regions of surrounding desolation and night, as to keep and cultivate the territory * An address delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society, in the Theological Seminary, Andover, September 10, 1833. |