condition of buried centuries. They discuss extinct species of thought. They exhort to untimely forms of virtue. They prop up decaying usages and obsolescent rites of worship. They are absorbed in the romance of priesthood. It may happen as an incident to their ministry that they tread delicately through the thoroughfare of a bloody revolution, affecting to ignore the forces which are embattled in the popular heart, and counting their mission successful if they keep the pulpit intact from the great agonies which are seething around it.

In a word, under such theories of preaching a sermon becomes a catechism, or a disquisition, or an essay, or an allegory, or a poem, or a painting, or a reverie, or an "encyclical letter," or a nondescript beneath all these, and nothing more. Preaching is literally reduced to an art, and religion is degraded to a science-reduced and degraded, not because of science and art, but because they are made nothing else than a science and an art, or are even made caricatures of both. The intense sacredness of truth as God's instrument in the quickening of dead souls, and in satisfying the cravings of their awakening, is lost out of sight in the preacher's solicitude for certain accuracies, or prettinesses, or dignities, or oddities, or distortions of artistic form.

Popular Criticism of the Pulpit. We are accustomed to condemn such preaching as defective in religious spirit. It is so.

We say, in that most expressive dialect of Christian experience, that it wants "unction." It does so. We whisper that it betrays a moral delinquency in the preacher. We are right in this. But are we not often guilty of a fallacy in the commendations bestowed upon the very thing against which our religious instinct has hurled the heaviest anathema that can be uttered in criticism of the pulpit? Such preaching is

often approved for its orthodoxy, for its science, for its literature, for its churchly dignity. You hear it commended as good doctrine, good philosophy, good logic, good rhetoric, good poetry, good painting, good acting, good manners, good art in all its forms, and yet you cannot feel it to be good preaching. It is fancied to be good for every purpose except that of doing good. The intellect, it is affirmed, approves it, imagination delights in it, sensibility revels in it, taste courts it, culture craves it, everything in man that is worthy of respect makes obeisance to one form or another of it, except his conscience; and this stands by as a disconsolate monarch, lamenting his impotence to put down as a sin that which by the consent of all allied powers is exalted as an accomplishment. Confusion follows, therefore, in clerical practice. False art comes to be recognised as the legitimate fruit of a sound faith, or scholarly training, or a churchly taste in the pulpit. Yet the obstinate conviction is underlying all the while, that this does not meet the responsibilities of the pulpit, nor do its work. Thus a divorce at length comes about, in the very theory of what the pulpit should be, between the moral usefulness of preaching and all its other excellences.

To illustrate the truth of this in but a single phase of it: have we not learned to speak of a certain class of ministers in tones of compassionate criticism, in which our culture and our conscience give the lie to each other? We say of one of these brethren in Christ, "He is a useful preacher, but he is not eloquent. He is a good man; he is an earnest man; he is a devout man; but he is not eloquent. He is a faithful pastor; he is a laborious pastor; he is a successful pastor; but he is not eloquent. He is a truthful preacher; he is a sound preacher; he is a solemn preacher; flippant men are awed by the earnestness of his discourse; think

ing men are strengthened by his faithful words; proud men sit as children at his feet; scoffers rage at his plain speech; men who rail at him are held, year after year, beneath his pulpit, as by an invisible hand; but he is not eloquent. Souls are converted under his timely ministration; somehowyou cannot tell how, the wind bloweth where it listeth, but somehow he hath the tongue of the learned; he knoweth how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; the common people hear him gladly; woman discerns of what spirit he is, and follows him, as she went early to the sepulchre ; and little children come running unto him, and praying that he will take them in his arms and bless them; but this man, so honoured of God; this man, so revered by ministering angels: this man, so much like Christ; this man, we cannot, oh no, we dare not, pronounce-an eloquent preacher!"

Never was a more egregious error committed than in this whole style of criticism, in judgment of the pulpit. If nothing is beautiful but truth, neither is anything respectable which is not true to God's thought. A sermon which is only a model of orthodoxy, or of science, or of literature, or of churchly conservatism, and which shoots by or vaults over the plain, living applications of truth as God's instrument in meeting the actual condition of souls, has no qualities which should win for it the respect of an earnest man. For the great uses of the pulpit it is an abortion. The falseness of it to the mission of a preacher vitiates its very virtues. Good taste condemns it as violently as conscience. All noble culture cries out against it as sternly as the Word of God. No tribunal is more fatal to its claims than that of Christian scholarship. No voice is more indignant in the rebuke of it than that of the most accomplished manhood. Such preaching is not only not good preaching, but it is not anything else which a

symmetrical and earnest soul can approve. Demosthenes, Chatham, John Adams, had they been preachers of the gospel, would never have preached thus, any more than Paul. They would not have listened to such preaching any more complacently than John Knox.

Let us bring the pulpit to its true test, though the human work be burned, and though the preacher be saved as by fire. Lay it open to the light, as it appears by the side of the simplicity, the directness, the timeliness, the sacredness, and the intensity of truth as used by the Holy Spirit in the salvation of souls. There lies the proof of a living pulpit. Confronted with such an ideal, the affectations I have described shrivel into nothingness. Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher; all is vanity! They are false to the very titles in which their praise is so often vaunted. They are not "sound;" they are not "scholarly;" they are not " eloquent ;" they are not " churchly;" they are not "beautiful;" they are not "finished:" they are not "in good taste;" for-they are not good sense. And they are not good sense because they are not subdued by awe of truth, as God's instrument, put into the preacher's hand for ends which it is impiety to neglect. No matter how much truth may be wrapped up in these false arts, souls never feel it; the preacher does not feel it. Neither can be quickened by it, any more than corpses in arctic seas can feel the latent caloric of the ice-fields which have congealed their life-blood.

Repose in Truth.

When one of those useful pastors, who are "not eloquent," encounters ungenial criticism, it is his right to rest calmly upon his calling of God to the preaching of truth. No secret distrust should impair the joy of such a preacher in his work. There is a certain trust in God's word that truth shall do its work in the hearts of men, which every preacher

needs to make him a man of power. It is an equable and joyous trust. It is a spirit of repose in the destiny of the instrument which God has chosen. Once possessed of it, and possessed by it, a preacher feels that he can afford to preach truth truthfully. He need not exaggerate truth. He need not distort it. He need not deck it with meretricious ornament. He need not surround it with eccentric illustration. He need not swathe it in transcendental speech. He need not belabour it with theatrical declamation. He need not mince it, nor trim it, nor inflate it, nor paint it. He has only to preach it thoughtfully, vividly, variously, and with the singleness of an intense soul living in communion with God, and then let it do its own work. It will do its work. He may have faith in it. In the midst of exhausting toils, when wearied with that stern suppression of fitful hopes and apprehensions which must enter largely into every intense life, he may find this spirit of repose in truth falling upon him like the mantle of a prophet. He may know then that his words are the wisdom of God and the power of God. He will often speak with the consciousness of that which is a pledge of his success. He will speak with a daring neglect of false expedients and conventionalities, which will astonish men who do not know where is the hiding of his power.

We are told that Napoleon in battle used to be restless, anxious, irritable, and taciturn, till a certain critical point was reached in the execution of his orders; but that after that crisis was past-a crisis invisible to all eyes but his-and long before any prospect of victory

appeared to his subordinates, he suddenly became calm, bland in his manners, apparently careless in his manœuvres, even jovial in his conversation; and at the battle of Eylau, at the risk of defeat, as others judged, he lay down to sleep on a hillock, which the enemy's grape-shot grazed without wakening him. In explanation of his hardihood, he said that there was a turning-point in all his plans of battle beyond which, if it were safely reached, he deemed victory secure. He knew then that he could not lose the day. His work was done.

The

The repose of genius in the assurance of results which are invisible to inferior minds, can bear no comparison with that rest in the power of truth which a preacher may feel, and which, if he does feel it reasonably, will go far towards realizing his expectations of success. secret of his power will be simply that he is proclaiming God's truth at God's bidding, and in God's methods. He gives to men that which God has given to him. The cloud of the Divine Presence envelops him. Within that august protection he performs his life's work. He cannot but achieve results which God will own. He may labour trustfully, for he must succeed. No man ever failed who preached thus. The world may never know his power; but He shall know it; and God shall one day proclaim it, at that tribunal at which shall be fulfilled those words so pregnant with the decisions of eternity upon the history of the pulpit: "There are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last."-AUSTIN PHELPS.

BAPTISM.

MAY I be allowed to offer a few observations upon the subject of Baptism as presented in the last number of THE HOMILIST? My observations have reference to the general subject, and not to Mr. Godwin or any other man's mere opinions.

1. As to the meaning of Matt. xxviii. 19, 20, referred to in questions 1 and 2, I can see no reason whatever for supposing that this great commission has any reference to the baptism of water. The command, whatever was meant by it, was intended for the apostles of Christ: it was an exact definition of their work; and yet Paul says that he was not sent to baptize but to preach the Gospel. Three works are mentioned in the commission, (a) making disciples, rendered

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teaching all nations," in our version; (b) baptizing; and (c) teaching. Those who are acquainted with the Greek will at once perceive that the work is really one"make disciples," and that the baptizing and teaching are explanatory of the way in which the work is to be done. Making disciples may refer to (a) the introduction of men into the visible Church-making disciples in name; or (b) the introduction of men into the true, spiritual Church-making disciples in nature. In either case, it is evident that baptism precedes instruction, and that, therefore, the system of baptizing believers on condition of their belief is unscriptural. It seems, also, that the baptizing is the principal agent in this process of making disciples, for the nations are to be "baptized into the name of God, and not, as in our version, "in"

his name. The effect of the baptism becomes thus a relationship. They are baptized into the nature of God really or nominally, and the teaching which follows completes the relationship.

Let us now suppose the baptism referred to, to be the baptism of water; then does the text teach that all baptized persons are members of the visible Church of Christ or of his spiritual Church, and that simply because they have been baptized. In the first case, the Baptists are wrong, as they admit men into the church after teaching and not before-admit them upon the evidence given of conversion, and not owing to their being baptized, and the Pædo-Baptists are wrong, because they baptize infants and do not regard them as members of the Church, because they have been baptized. In the second case, the commission teaches most emphatically and plainly, baptismal regeneration. Believing that the New Testament represents Christian Churches as being composed of converted persons, and represents children, though not members of such Churches, as being proper subjects of baptism; and believing, moreover, that the baptism of water has nothing whatever to do with the salvation of the persons baptized, I must understand the word "baptizing" in the text to refer to the baptism of the Spirit.

This opinion is much favoured by the force of the expression "baptize into the name" of God. It seems to denote something far more real than the mere formal introduction of a man into the visible Church. If the "name of Father,