never seen Christ, but simply heard of him, still heard the story as of one who had just been in the midst of them, and while facts so recent were recounted in their ears, their faith grasped them with ease, and their hearts burned within them as they thought, that the Eternal had been so near them, while yet they knew it not. This circumstance gave to the faith of all a certainty, and to their feelings a freshness, which, to say the least, are not common among christians now. This made them so bold in confessing their Lord in view of the lions and of the lictor's axe, for they could not but speak of the things which they had seen and heard.

We in these latter days have only heard of Christ. Our eyes have never been dazzled by "the brightness of the Father's glory," nor have they ever rested on him who was "the express image of his person." And yet we hold in our hands the history of his life and of his death, and that history was given us, not to exercise and test our critical sagacity,-not to furnish the basis of curious questioning and glorious declamation, but to bring home to our hearts with power those amazing facts which, eighteen centuries ago, made Judea such a theater of wonders. But what is the use which we make of it? Do those who are the stewards of the mysteries of God, make it an important part of the service they render, to cause these facts to be realized as true,-to be spread before the eyes of their hearers as facts indeed? Do they attempt to carry back their hearers to the days when they occurred, and set them down in the holy land to gaze upon the wondrous and heart-stirring display? Do those who read this history, read it as a record of events which once occurred upon the earth, and which, in themselves considered, even without reference to their spiritual meaning, form a tale of more exciting interest than any other narrative that ever was framed? Do they endeavor to read it as literally true; and in order to feel it so, do they become familiar with the manners, the costume, the domestic habits, and the religious education of the persons of whom it speaks, and weave all these parts together into a tale of faithful men, of affectionate women, and as the center and life of all, "the Word made flesh." We fear not and we think it may be safely said, that however much faith of another sort the church may possess, her historical faith is deficient; however near may be her communion with Christ, as her risen Lord, her communion with him through the evangelical history as her condescending Savior, is too infrequent to give her all the strength which she needs. Truly we may say in another

sense than did the apostle, that we no longer know Jesus Christ "after the flesh,"-through our failure to receive the literal narrative of his life, at least, not to believe,-if we do not deny, that he "is come in the flesh" at all. Such is the state of the church, which yet holds fast its integrity, and contends "earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." Infidelity also is moving in the same direction, for, having exhausted its armory of vulgar buffoonery and vile blasphemy,-having learned, that the critical research and historical inquiry from which it has hoped so much, re-acts against itself,-it is now turning the whole of the sacred narrative into a mythical panorama, in which it reads moral truth, but no literal events. This, we hear, is the last refuge of the "baptized infidels" of Germany; while from England, another is heard to speak of christianity as "a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest." And in our own land there is one eloquent declaimer, the author of "Nature," who, if he have not distinctly made known his opinions of the historical truth of christianity, may justly fall into suspicion, as one who reveres his Goethe and his Carlyle, more than he does the prophets and apostles. We read also in other signs of the times, that our amateur devotees to literature, with some very polite divines, are running in the same direction, despising the life of labor and of trial which Christ exacts of his disciples, and worshiping divine truth in the abstract, rather than him who is himself "the Truth."

The consequences of all this to the piety of the church are most disastrous. It wants stability, strength and steadiness,and it is not surprising that it should,-for, instead of "laying aside all malice, and all pride, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings," as the only preparation by which she can, as a new-born babe, "desire the sincere milk of the word," she is constantly turning aside from her interest in this word, and anxiously raising questions most vexed, as well as most vexatious, the great end of which seems to be to cherish malice, guile, hypocrisy, and above all, evil speaking. Instead of enriching her mind, interesting her soul, strengthening her faith with this word, and making this her great study and her guide, she uses it as a storehouse of arguments and proof-texts, by which she may prop up this or that dogma, or defend this or that rule of outward action. Let us here be understood. do not complain, for it would become us least of all, that questions of mental science, or of moral philosophy, should be both raised and canvassed with earnestness and freedom; but we do

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complain, that these should be carried out of their appropriate sphere, and thrust by main force, in the language of the schools, down the empty throats of the people; and that their attention should be occupied with abstract discussions, rather than that results of these discussions should be made to appear in a correct explanation of the word of God. Nor do we raise an outcry, that slavery, and temperance, and other things not to be named, should be examined, provided it be done in the exercise of sound sense and with a sober love of truth; but when the preacher of the gospel, or the private christian, is almost exclusively occupied in the formation of a correct public sentiment in reference to the final extermination of these evils, we would remind them, that they had better be looking after the private sentiments of their flocks and their friends, as to the love and the service of Christ.

As we have read the glowing pages of Mr. Schauffler's book and listened to its words of power; as we have been attracted onward by the life-giving charm which sparkles in every line, we have asked ourselves again and again, why it is, that the discourses which are delivered from our pulpits, should be so unlike these Meditations, both in their subject-matter and in the style in which it is arrayed. Why is it, that when the bible can be so explained as to furnish a rich, inviting, and varied feast; why is it, that sermonizing with us should become proverbial for its dull and monotonous song? And as we have asked these questions, we have fancied our preachers to rise up and answer these plain questions for themselves.

"There is no reason at all," says the preacher, who prides himself upon his abstractions and his metaphysics, and who, in preaching the gospel, rings to us his changes of the will of God, as secret and revealed, of the nature of the affections, of susceptibilities, desires, and the will,-as though by generalizations, and the use of terms, the meaning of which he can catch but a faint guess, the worldly man is to be detached from his worldliness, the sensualist purified from his debasing lusts, and the proud man unclothed of his state;-who forgets, that metaphysics do not "come" to all men "by nature," and that the language of mankind is not modeled after that of Locke and Burton. It is with inward pain, and often with heartfelt distress, that we listen to such discourses as these we have now in mind. Not, that we object to any statement, however abstract, or any distinction, however refined, if it is conveyed to the popular mind through the only channel which it is possible to enter, that of plain speaking language and of forcible illustration; VOL. X.

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but we do earnestly protest, against taking statements, illustrations, language and all, and clothing them in terms taken from writers the most refined, and distilled from minds of a constitution the most dry and perversely metaphysical. Surely the gospel, which presents the most tremendous facts, the most spirit-stirring scenes and startling realities, need not be systematically and habitually stripped of half its reality and half its power, and its hearers turned out in the clouds to pasture, or be choked with the chopped straw of the schools, to gratify the fastidious and self-complacent taste of any audience, or to help forward the intellectual growth of any preacher.

"But," says the declaimer, not the vocal but the intellectual declaimer, "listen to me, and pause and wonder. See how I strive, with a constant and straining effort, to bring up to your view something huge and massive. Behold this plain fact, or that simple principle, in the cumbrous clothing with which I have enfolded it. See how large and original it looks as it goes by your eye, drawing after it the long train which it has gathered in its passage through my profound mind. Look at me as I stand in the pulpit, and pour forth upon you the complicated and interwoven masses, which it has cost me such labor to forge and weld together,—and gaze on in bewildered amazement and in gaping wonder."

Then there is the figurante calling us to observe himself, the preacher, who forms himself at the mirror, and reads the rules of his rhetoric in the eyes of the fashionable ladies of his audience, who gives us affected pronunciation and studied movements, who fawns, and lisps, and bows, and this he does, while unfolding to us the lively oracles of God. Would, that he could be sentenced to carry his message to a stern Roman senate, or an assembly of unmoved Quakers, or to one made up of hard-headed Scotchmen or of severe Puritans,-till, under their listless inattention or their smiling contempt, his folly should evaporate, even though he himself should vanish with it into thin air.

Then we have the buffoon of the pulpit who, though serious and powerful, possesses a low and vulgar taste,-who degrades the glorious gospel by familiar illustrations, pollutes it by groveling associations, and descends himself into the dirt to drag religion down with him and to roll it there, and calls this preaching to the level of his hearers, and in justification of himself, retails stale anecdotes of this or that revolutionary officer, who always bade his men be careful and fire low.

In answer to each and to all of these representations of the several classes of preachers among us, and to some others whom we might easily imagine, we have only to say plainly and distinctly: that the bible is the great manual or hand-book of the church, and it ought to be the text-book of the preacher and not his book of texts: that the great channel through which religious instruction can best be conveyed to man, and around which his faith and his affections will most readily entwine, is the scriptures rightly understood, and adequately and powerfully illustrated: that, whether you would preach metaphysical theology, and discuss subtle, refined questions, you must do it with the bible in your hands and in the hands of your people, and that if you would nourish a piety, which is to maintain a constant growth and be fed with congenial food, you must make the bible a book of the highest interest to your hearers. You cannot hang their faith on this or that church-symbol, much less on this or that interpretation of it,-you cannot keep them alive unto God, by keeping them unto yourself as their minister, and by causing them to whirl around in the eddy of any popular preacher; but you can make the word of God to be to them spirit and life.

To do this, you must not turn over biblical explanation and biblical interpretation to the hands of the Sabbath school teacher, or the leader of a bible class; but you must carry the bible into your pulpit, and dignify the study of it by making it necessary, that it should be studied in order that you may be understood. The history of the bible should be made interesting, by clothing it with life and power, and by causing the past to give up its dead men and make them rise up and walk before you, and its forgotten scenes to be re-enacted before the eyes of your people. We must not content ourselves with giving the exact dimensions, to a cubit, of the second temple, of the gate called Beautiful, of the length of each colonnade, and the number of ornamental pillars; but we must set before our hearers, by vivid description and lively painting, the scenes which passed there during the days of the son of man, when it resounded with the tread and hum of men, the lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, and the noise of the changers of money. To the narrative must there be attached a moral and religious interest, and from it must be derived, arguments the most convincing to the conscience, and appeals which shall strike the soul with trembling awe. The prophets must be no longer a sealed book, which "men deliver to one that is learned, saying, read this I pray thee, and he saith I cannot, for it is sealed.