ART. III. REVIEW OF DR. CODMAN'S SERMON.

The Signs of the Times-A Sermon delivered before the Pastoral Associa tion of Massachusetts, in Park St, Church, Boston, May 24, 1836. By John Codman. D, D., Pastor of the Second Church in Dorchester. Boston: Published by D. K, Hitchcock, 1836.

THIS seasonable discourse was preached by its experienced author under peculiar circumstances. Since the balance of parties in the Convention of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts has rendered that body utterly unfit for the interchange of theological sympathies, the orthodox members have formed a new body, called the Pastoral Association, before which some venerable father in the ministry has been selected every year to deliver a discourse. This discourse is expected to contain the results of his observation; to be the brotherly and fatherly advice to the associated clergy of one who has watched the stream of events, has marked whither the current is setting, what are the prevailing dangers of the day, and what the means of avoiding them. In short the preacher is expected to give to the younger brethren the counsels of his wisdom and the conclusions of his experience. It was on this interesting occasion that this sermon was delivered. There is another circumstance which gives a little additional interest to this discourse. A gentleman, supposed to have held the balance of opinion between two contending parties, was called to preach an instalation sermon in Boston on the same evening, and happened to light on the same text. It would be curious to compare the two discourses; but we have not heard that the evening sermon has been given to the public. It was not our privilege to hear either of them. Common fame has reported that both the preachers seemed to acknowledge that opinions in these days are pushed to extension, and that practices sometimes are more extreme than opinions; but there was an obvious leaning in the two speakers to different sides. Both the champions intended, no doubt, to keep the middle road; but the one carried his falchion in his right hand, and the other in his left; and the shield was held up in opposite directions. Such are the reportings of common fame; which must not however be trusted too far, since Shakspeare tells us, she is as lying a gossip as ever knapp'd ginger.

Whatever may

be the character of the other sermon, we

must say, that the discourse under review is a word in season from one who has a right to speak. The reverend author in his youthful ministry passed through a very trying and eventful period. It was his lot to carry the gospel, in the face of opposition to a region where its beauty and glory had long been obscured; to encounter obloquy and reproach in his endeavours to proclaim it; to make sacrifices in personal comfort and property to maintain his standing; to be assaulted with personal violence, and to encounter attempts to exclude him even from his own pulpit, and after long struggles, to see his painful labours crowned with complete success. In all these struggles, none ever accused him of a want of boldness, fidelity, or zeal; in that day he was a new measure man. And now, when life, from her highest hill-top, begins to wind into the vale of years, he may be considered as speaking from an adequate experience.

It would be well if all men would thus compound their views, to make up their whole testimony concerning the best course to be pursued in life. It takes two surveys of our existence to find the well-tempered truth; and the warmth of youth must be modified by the last conclusion of age before wisdom can be regarded as complete.

It is obvious that the author of this sermon regards the moral appetites of men as requiring a very different regimen from what it was thought best to administer in his youth. Then he found himself surrounded by the deadening influence of a theology, which had stripped Christianity of all its quickening powers, and left it a cold, speculative system. The trumpet-call of truth was necessary to rouse the Church from its moral sleep. It was an age, not of excitement, but repose-an age of artful concealment and plausible ambiguity, when the most precious truths of religion were considered as the rubbish of the temple, which the innovators thought it not best to remove, because they might safely leave them to perish by their own decay.

We are now in danger from an opposite quarter. The world exists in extremes, and often passes from frost to fire, from an ague to a calenture. The same impatience of the binding truths of the Gospel is manifesting itself in a new direction. The Church no longer needs to be roused from moral stupor, but to be held back from reckless and inconsiderate activity. And since it is almost as much as a man's life is worth, to oppose some specious errours, borne

on the popular current, we ought to hail, and countenance, and support those faithful servants of God, who are willing, at the hazard of a seeming inconsistency, to guard us from either extreme.

This sermon is a delineation of the characteristics of our times, and the modification which they require of a minister's duties. The text is from Matt. xvi. 3, Can ye not discern the signs of the times? After an apology which was hardly needed, the author divides his discourse into two heads. He first calls the attention of his hearers to some of the peculiarities of the times in which we live; and then to the duties, which these peculiarities impose on the pastors of Churches.

Under the first head, he mentions the peculiar excitability of the age, and hints at the cause in the following seasonable remarks:

"At the present period, distance seems nearly annihilated, and by the wonderful power of art, we pass, almost with the rapidity of the wind, from city to city, through our widely-extended land, and may soon expect to cross oceans and traverse continents with as much ease as our ancestors crossed the rivers and hills of their native State. It is true, now and then, a boiler bursts, and a number of precious lives are lost by the explosion; or in some of our western waters, while the majestic steamer is passing on its high pressure, with almost incredible swiftness, its progress is instantly arrested by some concealed and fatal obstruction, and the souls, who had committed themselves to its guidance, are precipitated in a moment into eternity. The accurate observer of our times needs not, I think, to be reminded of the analogy."

It would be curious to trace, in the history of man, the conformity which is frequently found between his intellectual, moral, and physical condition; to show how exactly the spirit of his speculation is found in his practice, and how they mutually re-act upon, and affect each other. In this age, the enterprise of commerce, the political innovations introduced by liberty, and the bold and impatient spirit, which pervades all classes among us, has made its way into our religion. We are impatient of the present, and build all our sublime imaginings on the future. We expect to construct a car for the road to Zion, and move by steam in the spiritual world.

But this restless innovation must inevitably lead to one result, a general distrust in present opinions ;-in other words, a general scepticism. In amplifying our building, we shake our foundation. We add new links to our length

ening chain, but forget that unless the staple on which it hangs is fixed, it may give way, and plunge us into a fathomless abyss. Our minds must repose on some immutable first truths.

The whole subject of moral reform, in its various branches, the censoriousness and denunciation which have been resorted to in prosecuting the temperance and other kindred causes,-the spirit of innovation and change and love of novelty, the introduction of new doctrines, or new views of old doctrines, together with the instability of the ministry in their settlements, come into the author's picture of the age. Respecting the changes which have taken place in doctrines, he remarks:

"Are we not in danger, in our zeal for pressing the necessity of the sinner's immediate repentance and submission to God, of undervaluing the righteousness of him who is exalted a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins? and of losing sight of our dependence on the influence of that divine agent who alone can take away the heart of stone and give the heart of flesh,' and make us willing in the day of his power?' Are we not in danger of forgetting that, by the deeds of the law, no flesh living shall be justified,' and thus undervaluing that important doctrine of justification by faith alone, which Luther pronounced to be the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ.'"

It is a matter of astonishment to us, that men acquainted with the history of mental philosophy can look with so much confidence, as many now do, to that science, as casting light on the fundamental truths of religion. If we understand some of the innovators of the day, they do not profess to wish to alter the formularies of the Church, or the established truths of religion. Mainly and substantially they profess to agree with the Luthers, the Calvins, the Owens, and the Mathers of former ages. But they suppose the laws of the human mind are now better known than formerly; a marriage between mental philosophy and religion has been consummated which promises the fairest progeny. Our ancestors, good men! though they understood something of the doctrines of the Bible, could not paint these doctrines with the happiest skill, because they knew so little of what modern Metaphysics has taught about the spiritual powers and sensibilities on which these doctrines were to act. They had gathered, it must be allowed, a few sun-beams, from the celestial fountain of light; but they could not direct these beams to the earth,

because they were unhappily ignorant of the modern fences which part the field, and of those spots which modern culture has best prepared for vegetation. In other words, though our Fathers understood something of God, they were but little acquainted with man.

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For ourselves, we must confess, we have not a particle of this confidence in mental philosophy as throwing light on religion. We know well what its advocates will say; how much they will insist on the fact, that religion was made for man; is an attribute of man; emanating from mind, and addressed to mind, and can never be understood, when considered apart from mind and its laws. Just as a picture has reference to the eyes that are to survey it. But then, as the tator of the picture derives his impression of grandeur or beauty, not from studying the science of optics, but from certain instincts and powers of body and mind, which he holds in common with the humblest of our race; so we contend that a man understands his Bible best, not from having studied an artificial vocabulary of mental laws, but from those eternal feelings of conscience and obligation, of which God implants the seeds in all human bosoms, at their very birth.

If metaphysics be so explained as to mean these broad laws of our nature, then we say it is best found in books where it has been least sought. It is found in the Bible itself; in Homer; in Euripides and Demosthenes; in Cicero ; in Shakspeare; in Burke; in all those noble geniuses, who were too intent on things to deceive themselves with shad

ows.

How can a man place much confidence in systems, which none but their authors have ever understood, which no two proselytes have even agreed in explaining alike; which have been crushed before the moth; which have passed away like the morning cloud and early dew; and which, by ambiguities and falsehoods steal away our faith from God, and place it on man. It is really amusing to see how some of the acutest men have hailed, as eternal truth, some newsprung lights of mental science, which, while they were yet speaking, have vanished away. Let any man read the history of metaphysics for one century, and have confidence in it, if he can.

The mind and its laws are best seen, when it is operating on something else beside itself. It always eludes the searcher's eye, when it is made the direct object of contemplation. VOL. IV.

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