CHAPTER IV.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

BUT there is a different thought from any of those to which our attention has been thus far directed. In aiming at the great and single object the pulpit has in view, it gains other things; things which it does not so directly aim at, but which belong to it as its natural allies, which are incidental to it, and follow in its train of influences and blessings.

The mere fact that it has a ready and almost constant access to the minds of the people, is itself an index of its power. "To the poor the Gospel is preached." The pulpit is a popular and democratic institution, fitted to protect the rights of all classes of men, and to diffuse a universal spirit of industry, virtue, kindness, and peace. In the organization of human society, it is the only official bond between the aristocracy and democracy of the Christian world. Its sphere of influence lies first and chiefly with the middle and lower classes; nor is there one of the institutions which are de

signed to make them better and more useful men, but may be traced to the pulpit as its founder. I am ashamed that, in one respect, the corrupt Church of Rome reads an affecting lesson to Protestants; and it is in their solicitude to bring the poor to the house of God. There are no churches for the rich in Papal lands; this is an expedient of Protestantism, and a modern refinement upon that Christianity which teaches that "the poor ye have always WITH you.” "The rich and the poor meet together: the Lord is the Maker of them all." So it ought to be, and so it will be, in every prosperous church. These select churches ought all to have died with lukewarm Laodicea. In other spheres we look for distinctions among men; Christianity looks for them; but not in the Church of God. The pulpit is the great spiritual leveller, because it is the expositor of a common Christianity; a Christianity that is "no respecter of persons;" a Christianity that swallows up all that is adventitious in the mortal, in his immortality. This is one department where it performs its appropriate functions. The difference in the social institutions in Pagan and Christian lands, in the attachments, virtues, characters, and thousand agencies in domestic and public life, cannot be accounted for without its influence.

It has also truths and obligations, and a

benevolence, and a morality addressed to the higher classes. Its voice has been often heard on subjects of high public interest. Its influence has been felt in scenes which "tried men's souls," and amid revolutions which have alternately jeoparded and advanced the well-being of the world. But whether they have been for good or for evil; whether they have been religious, or civil, or of a mixed character; the influence of the pulpit has been felt in them all. That great event in the history of the world, the American Revolution, never would have been achieved without the influence of the pulpit. Political society "moved on the axis of religion." The religious movement gave its character to the social movement. Men who knew there was a "Church without a Bishop," knew also there could be a "State without a King." Had the pulpits of New England and the Presbyterian Church, occupied the same position on this question which was occupied by so many of the pulpits which I could name, we should have been colonies still.

Nor does this event stand alone as exemplifying the power of the pulpit in affairs not purely religious. The religion of a nation is not only one of the elements of its existence, but the varied modifications of that religion affect every part of it, and give it its character. We are at some loss for a selection of facts to illustrate

this remark, because they crowd upon us from every quarter. Take the following as examples. Few measures have exerted a greater influence upon national character, than the adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer, of the Church of England-the Solemn League and Covenant, of the Church and people of Scotland-the Augsburgh Confession the League of the Protestant Princes of Smalkalde the Westminster Confession of Faith -the Articles of the Synod of Dort-and the Cambridge and Saybrook Platform. Yet were all these either the subject matter of legislative provision and enactment, or ratified in assemblies in which the Princes of the Empire were present. The influence of the pulpit was felt in them all. There is a young republic which has sprung into being in our times, on the shores of Africa; and on its deep foundations are the names of Hopkins, Mills, Finley, and Ashmun—names not soon forgotten in the history of the American pulpit.

There is one department where this incidental influence of the pulpit ever has been acknowledged; I mean that of learning and science. In the Hebrew state, its religious teachers were the chief depositaries of its literature. Men like Moses and Samuel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Isaiah and Daniel, as well as the Scribes and Pharisees, and Rabbins of later

times, could not long dwell among an uncouth and ignorant people. The standard writers upon Jewish antiquities lead us to conclude that the cities of the Levites were seats of learning, and that the schools of the Prophets were not unlike the schools of Grecian philosophy, where the young men associated with their teachers, and were qualified to be the teachers of the nation. The Jewish priests are declared to have been set apart to their office, that they "might teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the hand of Moses." They must have been men of no inconsiderable learning in order to have performed this service. If it is a fair supposition that the Jewish priesthood understood their own religious laws, as well as they were understood by Witsius, Warberton, Graves, and Michaelis, they must have exerted no humble influence on the literature of this people.

There are strong sympathies, and a most natural alliance, between religion and learning,Christianity and every department of human science. In the brightest periods of the church and of literature, this alliance has been seen and felt. It cannot be otherwise than that a class of men, to whom is committed the religious instruction of the people, should exert an influence upon their literature, if it were only in liberating