Their commission ran: "Lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins." This was substantially true of the Apostles and of the early preachers whom Christ sent forth. They proclaimed everywhere that men should repent; and as a requisite to repentance they aimed at producing conviction, a sense of guilt and condemnation. Their example it is safe, nay, a duty, to imitate. The minister is also appointed to coöperate with the Holy Spirit in his work; and what is the first work of the Spirit? It is "to reprove of sin." This fact the herald of the Gospel should never lose sight of; he must co-work with the Spirit; and hence, expose guilt; for nothing can be done towards bringing the sinner to Christ till convinced of sin. He should never be satisfied till, by argument, expostulation and appeal, he has done all that he can to make the conscience speak.

Let the preacher remember, then, in his preparations for the sacred desk, that he has a loftier purpose than the interweaving of gems and flowers to please or enchant. True, what passes for a sermon may blaze with brilliants; it may be made to captivate the fancy like a fairy's flower bed; and worse still, while it tickles the ear, may be just as ineffective in touching the moral nature of the hearers, or shaping their characters. They may go away exclaiming, "What a beautiful discourse!" while it awakens not a single feeling of compunction, a single desire to flee from avenging wrath to the shelter of the cross. The truth is muffled in roses, and is, therefore, not a dagger, but a pillow for the conscience. The preacher should remember that "the sword of the Spirit" was not designed to please the eye, but to pierce the guilty breast; and every time it is drawn, it should be so wielded as to perform its office. The gleam of the naked steel is its own stern beauty. It will admit of no ornament but its own sparklings; and to be most effective, it must be presented to the mind all burnished with the light of the throne in which it is tempered. Let him who wields it, therefore, feel that he has a solemn work to perform; that he is dealing with immortal interests; that he is the bearer of a message to those dwelling "in the region and shadow of death ;" and that he can not stop to cull the flowers of taste, or play with

the fancy. Wounding the conscience can alone answer his high purpose. A sermon which, when vivified by the Spirit, leaves nothing fastened and working there in the bosom of the guilty, has not answered the end for which the preacher was commissioned of heaven. Even discourses consolatory to the Christian should trouble the wicked. For the most cheering truths, those that flow from the everlasting covenant and the cross of Christ, while they animate and encourage the former, are fitted to disturb the latter. Such is the nature of all holy truth, and such are its legitimate results. It affects men according to their characters. This will be emphatically the case when it blazes forth with unclouded brightness at the judgment. While the children of God there, in view of his character, his government and law, his counsels and promises, the covenant of grace and plan of redemption, will shout hosannas, the wicked, in view of the same, will wail in self-condemnation; the clear manifestations of truth producing equally these opposite effects. Why should not discriminating presentations of truth, even in consolatory sermons, produce the same discriminating results? Ought not the preacher, in all his exhibitions of Gospel truths, to make it his aim to hold them up exactly as they will appear at the judgment? Certainly a lower standard is unworthy an ambassador of Christ; and how else can he meet in peace the flaming Judge, whom he has covenanted to serve in the Gospel ministry? The Bible never consoles the sorrowing or afflicted Christian in a way to give comfort to the unrepenting delinquent. He, then, who presents evangelical truth for purposes of consolation, with so little discrimination as not to disturb the consciences of the wicked, may well fear lest he have not met the demands of his solemn commission: "Preach the preaching that I bid thee."

True, the Gospel in its threatenings, not less than in its encouragements and hopes, should be proclaimed affectionately. The law of kindness should ever dwell on the lips of the herald of the Cross. The spirit of Calvary, love, must be the spirit in which he lives and moves. He should manifest no asperity in his tones; much less cherish it in his heart. He must present his message glowing with love to God, and overflowing with sympathy for souls; for the greater the affection with

which it is uttered, provided it be plain and direct, the deeper it will pierce the unsanctified conscience. Harsh denunciations never strike deep; and fault finding only irritates. The minister should be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; but while thus sagacious and kind, he must remember it is neither wise nor harmless to leave the consciences of his hearers unsearched.

3. The Gospel must be addressed to the heart. The sinner is insensible to spiritual realities, dead in sin, and must be awakened to life. The Christian even is sometimes in a state of lukewarmness; worldliness and formality have palsied him, and he must be aroused. True, men will not awake from the slumbers of sin without the quickening influences of the Holy Spirit; yet the Gospel finds its peculiar home in the heart. This has an original susceptibility which may be touched by the Saviour's character, sufferings, or kind instructions. Gospel truth should, therefore, be particularly addressed to the heart; so pressed as to arouse its deepest sensibilites. Although, as has been said, holy truth in the intellect will move the moral feelings to a greater or less degree; yet it is obvious to all that the manner of its presentation, the warmth, earnestness, the enthusiasm of the speaker, will greatly increase its moral effectiveness. The Gospel should then not only be made to enlighten the intellect and burn on the conscience, but to warm the affections, stir the heart to its core. This its varied sentiments and considerations have an inherent tendency to do. Nothing has such power to incite love to God and man, inspire gratitude in view of mercies, or patience to endure trials, excite sympathies for human sufferings, open and expand the soul with noble purposes, strengthen it in high resolves, awaken its momentous solicitudes and holy aspirations, as the Gospel; nothing to melt the soul in tenderness as Calvary's agony and compassion. Then he, who would save his hearers, must press all these considerations drawn from the wrath and mercy of God, from the divine threatenings and promises, from salvation by the blood of Christ, and condemnation to utter woe, from judg ment and immortality, with all the earnestness of his nature. No; the preacher of righteousness can not discharge his high trust without presenting and enforcing the truth of the Gospel

in all its vital peculiarities; and, as it has a power to soften, to soothe and comfort, he must present it as a solace to sorrow, and a balm to the wounded conscience. But while he presents it in all its milder lights, while he distils it upon his hearers like dew upon the mountains of Zion, he should also present it in its stormy energies; it should be poured upon the hardened soul in burning masses. For an impression must be made, or the soul is lost; and that impression must be made by God's truth; not by fiction or error, not by the enchantments of imagination, or the arts of oratory, but by God's truth. The enchantments of the imagination and the arts of oratory are no farther admissible than as they aid in driving deeper the wedge of holy truth into the heart. The conviction can not be too strong, that the only legitimate impression effected by preaching is produced by the simple, naked, undisguised truth of God presented in all its living intensity; so that the Holy Ghost can work by his own instrument to convict and regenerate, to console and animate, to save and glorify. This can be adequately done only by the self-abandonment of the preacher to the truth he utters; forgetting every thing but his message, the undying souls before him, the God above him, and the judgment seat to which both he and his auditory are alike amenable.

The most important element, therefore, in the presentation of the Gospel so as to impress the heart, is sympathy with the specific truth uttered. This is evident on the general principle that that faculty or tendency of mind most moved or exercised in the production of a discourse will, on its delivery, most affect the same faculty or tendency in the hearer. The discourse, in its preparation most exercising the reason or logic, will most affect the reason or logic of the intelligent hearer; and that exercising peculiarly the imagination will peculiarly interest the imagination of the hearer; and that exercising most the heart, will most stir the heart of the hearer. Preaching must be inwrought with emotion, and then it will awaken emotion. Nothing, indeed, is more essential to the effective preacher than sympathy with his holy theme; a heart molten with the fires of the Spirit kindled by the truth he utters. We mean, then, something more than those natural emotions which inspire secular eloquence; we mean those boly emotions excited by the

truths of the Gospel; and those emotions expressed in voice and action. Let us explain. Our physical constitution is so intimately connected with our mental, that the thoughts, feelings and affections of the latter, express themselves almost instantaneously in the tones and inflections of the voice; in the eye, the lip, the changing color, the nerves of the face; in the gestures, sometimes even in the motion of the whole body; every limb being seemingly instinct with feeling. Particular mental affections have marked outward expressions easily recognized. The countenance is a mirror in which all that exists in the secret recesses of the soul is reflected. Now every truth of the Gospel is fitted, by the aids of the Holy Ghost, to awaken specific emotions and affections. By a preacher's sympathizing with the truth, we mean that he should so deeply ponder its relations to God and his everlasting kingdom, its practical bearings, its application to himself and to his hearers, so earnestly implore the influences of the Holy Spirit, that its whole legitimate impression shall be made first on his own heart, every chord become attuned to harmony with the glorious reality. Then let him deliver his message with all these natural expressions of holy emotion in his voice and manner, so that the truth shall not only be uttered by the tongue, but breathe in his tones, gleam in his eye, glow in his countenance, speak in every gesture, every motion. Our choirs are taught that the tones of the tune, and consequently of their voices, must accord with the sentiment of the hymn; the simple design of the music being to impress the sentiment more deeply. So the preacher is to express in every natural way the feelings and sentiments inspired by the sacred truth he proclaims. This is personal sympathy with it, both in heart and action; and this deep spiritual sympathy constitutes the grand element of power in the successful pulpit orator. Without it, whatever other requisites he may possess, he is essentially defective, crippled. The pulpit orator, then, must be a holy man. His power to move the gracious affections of his hearers is dependent mainly on personal piety. This is the vitality of his art; this the fire by which he shines. Without this he may delight the taste, awaken admiration, move the sympathies, cause weeping, even arouse the conscience; but he can not reach the profounder and