church, beside presenting to the world along with much that is good, the strangely agglomerated "Calvinistic creed, Arminian clergy, and Popish ritual"; may raise up "Essayists and Reviewers" to wield their pens against the credibility of the New Testament miracles, and quite possibly turn out a missionary bishop or two who will write down the "Five Books of Moses"! In other communions, individual cases of apostasy may occur; but it takes a liturgical union to go over bodily against her own Articles, and to give us avowed infidels in the "Apostolic Succession."

Now when we remember that doctrine is but another name for truth, we see how great a power æsthetic religion must always sacrifice; for there is nothing so mighty, and especially so mighty against opposition as truth. To use a homely illustration, taken at second hand, "truth is like a snow-ball"; if you create a genial atmosphere around it, the first you know it will perhaps have melted out of sight; but when you see its enemies casting it out into the cold, you have nothing further to fear for it. One good frosty night would make it as hard as a diamond; and if some one in a rage shall now endeavor to kick it out of the world, you shall see it rolling up volume as it goes; till, reaching some great precipice prepared for it by Providence, it shall thunder down with all the weight of an avalanche. Such a truth has been making such a leap quite lately in our country,and the earth yet vibrates with the mighty concussion.

And when you take up not one truth, but many such, and combine them into one of those creeds which a late convention manifested so natural a fear of, you have still greater power. Union is strength, and the solid doctrines of a well digested system, like the several plates of a galvanic battery, generate a force by contact, which can not be found in any of them alone. The religion, therefore, that would be strong, must rib itself round with a consistent statement of doctrine.

Such a religion alone can fully avail itself of the power of the pulpit. Where doctrine is put out of sight, the pulpit has really very little of value to work upon; and the result is that in such communions it is made little account of. "The Service! The Service! The Beautiful Service!" cry the admiring crowd; and our Lord's command to go into all the world and preach,

is quite omitted from the record. Corresponding to this assignment of an inferior place to preaching, you will find certain peculiarities in the church architecture of the liturgical sects. In the great Romish churches of Europe, the little receptacle designed for the preacher might be sought after by a Protestant for some time before he found it; and when he found it, he might be in doubt for what use it was intended. It is glued up against the wall in a corner; or it hangs like a bird's nest from a single pillar-in which act there is the clearest æsthetic propriety. It is said that in a large portion of the Greek church there is no preaching at all, the entire dependance being placed upon the liturgical forms. And there is another church, neither Romish nor Greek, though recently revealing some strong affinities for the latter, in which it is quite often insisted that people will never do well till they cease to go up to the sanctuary "to hear sermons." Indeed, considerable anxiety is manifested at times, lest the pulpit should be made too prominent when we convene for Sabbath service. Perhaps it may. Perhaps we do not pay the attention we ought to the other exercises of the sanctuary. Most ministers could make some improvement in the public reading of the Scriptures or even in the giving out of a hymn; a large number would do well to prepare themselves more thoroughly for leading their congregations in the service of prayer; and it need not be denied that some exercises might be introduced into many congregations with decided profit, which would seem to certain people half liturgical. This, however, is nothing to the purpose as affecting the question of preaching the Word. Let us bring the other exercises up if need be, but let us not bring that down; and let us take care not to allow the impression to prevail too inconsiderately, that preaching is in any sense an inferior exercise to prayer and praise. Our Saviour did not so reckon it when he gave out the great commission; nor did the apostles so treat it in the fulfillment of their work. "Go ye into all the world and preach," were their marching orders; and right well did they execute the command. We do not just now remember of an instance in which Paul is said to have "read service," or in which Peter "intoned the prayers." Trace these men where you will, among the wild men of Lycaonia, in the Jewish synagogues,

or among the cultured Greeks at Athens itself, it is all one thing. They are known and heard from as preachers; and in that character do they exert their great power for the Christian faith. Will not some one be so kind as to tell us where the notion came from that prayer and praise are more serious, more important, more acceptable to God than preaching the Word? Is it nobler, wiser, better, more becoming, in us poor sinners, to always stand talking to God; or would it be as reverent and appropriate, sometimes to sit reverently down and wait to hear what he, by his appointed instrumentality, would say to us? God is great, and we do well to adore him; but he has something to say to us by the arrangement for preaching, and it is wise and well for us thoughtfully to attend upon it. Talk of bringing down the pulpit to a lower standard in such an age as this? of paying less attention to the very thing our Saviour set his ambassadors to do? You would damage the church beyond all estimate by such a movement. Satisfy this thinking American people with "reading service"; this people, so intense and eager in everything else, with elegant proprieties and imposing ceremonies? We have outgrown all that; those are the clothes that children wear. The only way to bring down the pulpit is to put men into it who will not study and who can not preach— and when any denomination has pretty extensively applied that remedy already, their anxiety on the subject ought to be quieted. The world needs truth, strong, doctrinal truth, brought forth with all the energy of a heart in love with it, and with all the effectiveness of eloquent speech. "Go, teach all nations," saith the Lord, and that church best fulfills its mission that adheres most closely to these terms.

That kind of religion, of which strength rather than beauty is the leading element, also has upon it the mark of purity. It is the nature of corruption to produce weakness. When it invades the human body it unfits one for work; and when it prevails in the church, her strength and her influence depart, and even her courage gives way. As a general rule it will also be observed, that a church is guarded against corruption by sound doctrine. "Sanctify them through thy truth," said our Saviour; and sound doctrine applied by faithful preaching to all the concerns of life certainly makes men better. Thus it happens that whenever we

find any considerable reformation of manners and morals in the church, we find a reformation of doctrine as well. That great movement of the sixteenth century, which we call the Reformation by preeminence, furnishes a very striking illustration of this statement, the new church springing forth from the embrace of the old harlot, the instant she caught sight of the long lost doctrine of justification by faith. And it was exactly the same, when a little later, there went out such an exodus from the church of England. The Puritan movement was as doctrinal as the great Reformation had been bringing out into special notice those "knotty points" of theology, by which the Calvinistic system is chiefly known. Those sturdy men contended as earnestly for the "faith once delivered unto the saints," as for a more decent mode of life among Christians and Christian ministers. People call them Puritans: it was the very name they deserved; and they wore it till their virtues made it honorable.

It may be objected, however, that in other cases, strictness of doctrine has been associated with a much less orderly conduct. It may be said that the higher toned of two theologies has sometimes given quite the fainter utterance against some practical ungodliness; and that men who would exscind whole synods for a formula, have been ready enough to hold in fellowship those who practiced oppression upon their fellow-men. It is not necessary for our present purpose to deny these statements; human nature is a singularly inconsistent thing even when partly sanctified; yet it will generally be found, that where the strong doctrine and loose practice are thus joined together, either the doctrine has been a little over stated, so as not to leave it in its best form, or else there has been some neglect in the application of it by preaching, to the practical issues of life. It is nothing new for men to entertain a traditional veneration for a creed from which the vitality has departed; neither is it strange for them to insist vehemently upon a doctrine whose plainest practical inferences they quite ignore. We have had some rich experience here in times but just gone by. One of the doctrines upon which as Americans and Protestants we have always insisted, has been the right of every human being to have access to the Bible. On scarcely any one point has our feeling been

more united and outspoken; and we have rallied the Romanists on the subject until we have obliged them to deny their own principles. And yet, it is scarcely four years, since the preacher who was bold enough to apply this doctrine to the case of some four millions of people among us, most of whom were forbidden by law even to learn to read this Book, took large risk of being branded as a fanatic, if he were not indeed held up through the newspapers, as one who "preached politics"! Some ten or fifteen years ago a great interest was suddenly awakened upon the question of the unity of the human species. It started with some statements of Prof. Agassiz, in which he was thought to contradict the Mosaic record; and the religious press as well as the pulpit very appropriately undertook to show that "Adam was the father of us all.” Yet who can have forgotten how much wisdom and courage it needed at that time calmly to go on and say, that if we all had one father, we certainly ought to stop buying and selling one another? That species of heresy raised a louder outcry than the other. So there we were, with medicine enough to cure the disease that was in the church, and the same carefully bottled and labelled, but nobody cured because it was not put upon the sore. We brought out our phial once a week, and shook it up, and said what a grand remedy it was for all the sins and woes of men, and then put it back again. There were some who attempted to do better, but they were not all skilful men, and the patient always objected to the treatment, and most of the doctors said it was wrong. It can scarcely be doubted that if from the time the first slaveship was landed on our shores, the Gospel had been faithfully applied to the sin of oppression, the evil would either have been entirely removed by a peaceful process, or would at least have been so restrained as never to have ventured on treason, rebellion and war. There was power enough in the truth to have disposed of this evil, but it was power not well applied to the case in hand. There is healing efficacy in the doctrines, but through our negligence or rashness in the handling of them, their best effects are sometimes lost.

It remains only to notice that the religion of power is distinguished from the aesthetic kind, by a certain spiritual life kindled in the soul. Christianity is not a mere doctrinal faith, nor