THE POWER OF THE PULPIT.

CHAPTER I.

THE FACT ILLUSTRATED, THAT THE PULPIT HAS POWER.

Ir may not be deemed the most modest service in one who ministers at the altar, to select as the topic of somewhat discursive remark, The Power of the Christian Pulpit. "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." The light of the pulpit ought so to shine before men, as to need no other commendation, save its strong and steady radiance.

Yet it was not egotism in Paul, to "magnify his office." The work of the Christian Ministry is one which possesses strong peculiarities, and one which has strong claims. There is nothing that resembles it in the ordinary employments of men. While it has its full share of toil, it has solicitudes and discouragements, dependencies and disabilities, that are peculiarly its own. It has too its successes, its expectations, its honors and its rewards. It

knows its own bitterness, and "a stranger does not intermeddle with its joy."

For the purpose of presenting our subject in as practical a light as I am able, I propose to advert to the fact itself that the pulpit has power; to show what are the constituent elements which invest it with this moral influence ; to point out the duties of ministers themselves in order to make full proof of the power with which it is invested; and to specify the obligations which rest on the church of God to give it its due place and importance. It is to the first of these thoughts that we shall devote the first five chapters, the fact itself that the pulpit has power.

Our first remark, on this branch of the subject, is, that the institution of such an order as religious teachers is deeply imbedded in the common principles, and common wants of man, as fallen by his iniquity. Such is his intellectual and moral nature, that he imperatively demands religious teaching. The necessity is perfectly absolute. Teachers of religion are indispensable to the existence of religion in the world. No matter what the religion is; so long as natural conscience has a dwelling in the human bosom, there must be a class of men devoted to its services. So far as my information extends, there is no nation, nor tribe, nor any age of the world, that ever has been utterly destitute of

an order of men separated to sacred purposes Paganism, in its more degraded, as well as its more enlightened and polished forms, down to the "Medicine man" of our own wilderness, has its shrines, its offerings, its sacrifices, and its priests. If man is not a religious, he is a superstitious being. In the most degenerate tribes, the priests have been found even divided into different and distinct orders, and distinguished by their costume, as they bave been simple soothsayers, or astrologers, or familiar with the arts of magic.

The Sacred Order constitutes one of the essential elements of the social state. Society can no more exist without it, than without some form of civil government. Men must have some religious ritual; the form must exist, where the reality is dead; and even where the reality itself is death, there must be a ritual to preserve the death-like reality. All religion is, to a certain extent, the religion of form; even that revealed from Heaven is so far a religion of form, that its spirit is expressed in outward and instituted observances. Men will not consent to occupy a place in associated communities without the recognized dispensers of these religious rites. Conscience demands them for the living and the dead. Be it but necromancy, or some strange form of "black art" conjuration; the mother demands them

for her new-born child, and the child demanas them at the obsequies of its parent. There is no stoicism, no sullen apathy, so strongly intrenched within its philosophic indifference, but that it is sometimes bathed in tears. Human wisdom never erects her temple so high as to be above the tempest. A voice that is

oracular must speak to men in the day of their calamity, even though the oracle be unheeded in the elevation of their pride. A hand that is allied to what is unseen and unearthly is looked for to wipe away the tears from the face of sorrow, even though it be unsought amid the sunshine of joy.

This voice of nature is strong-in this respect is stronger than the "strong man armed." The infidel Hume was no friend to the pulpit, yet has he left the lesson to the world, "Look out for a people entirely void of religion; and if you find them at all, be assured they are but few degrees removed from the brutes." Infidelity itself could not live without religion. Were every class and order of religious teachers now abolished, and every man of them exiled from the earth, not only, in some form or other, would the office be resuscitated and restored, but their most violent opposers would be clamorous for their restoration.

And what are these but indications that the institution of such a class of men as religious

teachers has its foundations toò deeply laid in the nature of man ever to be powerless? If it has power where its only aliment is the grossest darkness, and the most degrading superstition, it is no arrogance to say, that power belongs to it where it is nurtured by God's truth. If it has power because man wills it, it is not too much to affirm, that it has power because God wills it, and it rests upon his authority. If conscience demands it, and it is created by the wants of man, then in its best and truest form, is it no institution of mere arbitrary appointment, but one which abundantly indicates the wisdom and benevolence of its Divine Author.

But we pass from these regions of mere Theism and pagan darkness, instructive as they are. There is a negative influence which the pulpit exerts, which is not always appreciated. The importance of suppressing the vicious habits of men can be estimated only by the intrinsic turpitude of their vices, and the devastation and ruin which they spread over the world. It were no easy matter to calculate the vast sum of wretchedness suppressed, and misery prevented, by the influence of the Gospel. It is a thought of some interest, that the well springs of overt and public iniquity are broken up just in the measure in which the pulpit has power over the minds of men. So absolutely is it at