LADIES'

A WORD FOR THE PREACHER.

THE office of the Preacher is one of God's institutions. Man did not create it, neither can he abolish it. It was commenced in Eden by the Almighty himself, and awful sermons were poured on the ears of the infant world, waking the powers of thought to noblest uses, and directing young wonder to celestial and immortal glories. Those two words" God said," "God spake," in the most ancient books of the Bible, are followed by God's preaching, unparalleled in importance, sublimity and power. To execute the same office, God raised up Preachers, and we see his work performed by Noah-the preacher of righteousness; by Abraham and Moses; by the Prophets, till the world is astonished by the mission of John the Baptist and the coming of Jesus, the Christ of God. The Apostles took up the same work when the voice of Jesus was no longer heard, and to them we owe a thousand hints concerning the direct, timely and efficient application of Gospel principles.

The history of Preaching is the history of human progress. It is more intimately connected with the conservation of the good and the reformation of the wrong, than many imagine; and, with confidence, the Christian may point to the past as a whole, to show that the Pulpit has been the friend of Man—that many times it was the only office that was faithful to Liberty and Equality, curbing the power of the great and animating the lowly to higher efforts for their rights and privileges.

But there is one great fact that stands out on the page of History—you meet it every where in the annals of Civilization, and even the present day shows it too plainly to escape the notice of the observing. I mean the fact, that the extremest liberty of the Pulpit has been less dangerous to man than the restraints imposed by those who would tame its zeal and cripple its freedom. What Milton wrote concerning the freedom of the press, may be applied, in princi

ple, to the freedom of the pulpit; and nothing is more true than the remark of the counsel of Mr. Pierpont in the famous case of his in Boston, that "you cannot draw a line without either hedging in the pulpit by arbitrary rules, or leaving it free to the honest judgment of the preach

er."

I cannot but ask special attention to an extract from a religious publication that expresses my own feelings and conviction most truly. It is a sermon in itself, and I believe it does not too strongly put the case in behalf of the Preacher. It says:

"The last thing that the minister can intend is an insult on the judgment, or an outrage on the feelings of his congregation. His relations with them are of the most tender and affectionate character. He is dependant on them not only for his support, but for his good name and fair standing. They have bound him to them by their flattering preference at the outset, and by numerous tokens of their respect and kindness. Providence has connected him with them in yet more intimate sympathy by the sorrows in which he has been their comforter, by the beds of sickness and death at which he has ministered, by the memory of the departed, for whom he has performed the last rites of relig ion. His strongest temptation is to suppress whatever may give them pain, and above all whatever may make him seem unmindful of their friendship and ungrateful for their confidence. Only those who have made the experiment, can know how violent is the self-conflict, how agonizing the effect, involved in the first sermon in which the minister is aware that he must encounter opposition and ill-will. We do not believe that it is a step ever taken wantonly and recklessly, but only from the strongest convictions of duty and the profoundest sense of responsibility, nay with much more of the martyr-spirit than is often implied in world-famous sacrifices. When such an act of heroism, however misjudged or ill-timed, is met with anger and bitterness, one of two equally important

results is apt to ensue. If the minister be not endowed with peculiar strength of character, he is persecuted, grieved and broken down into a supple-time-server, an irresponsible mouth-piece for his congregation, a paltry and contemptible item of church furniture. If he is made of 'sterner stuff,' the danger is that he will be driven to a pugilistic attitude, converted into a champion of impracticable ultraisms, and rendered permanently a disturbing force in the Christian community. In both these ways there have been lost to the best interests of religion and humanity many, whom simple justice on the part of their congregations might have saved."

This last idea is a sad one indeed. The high spirited are driven from the Pulpit by the restraints imposed-restraints which cripple the best efforts of the man; for nothing is more oppressive to the due working of one's mind, than to be ever in fear of having its expression perverted. The timid are made more so, and keep themselves in the past, in the glories of nothingness, or are simply preachers against other sects and the sins which their people are in no danger of committing. But to the fearless there is given too often a recklessness, like that of the fierce steed who champs the bitts in his mouth and plunges on, conscious only of the possession of strength. But there is a class who have a keen sense of manly pride and honor-who will sink nothing for the sake of praise or popularity, but who will, "through good report and evil report," cling to their office as Preachers, feeling that the necessity to do so is laid upon them. Though not timid or fearful, yet they know the perverting power of prejudice, jealousy, and ill feeling, and they would fain guard against unnecessarily arousing human passions. They think as much of the Dependence as of the Independence of the Pulpit; for they aim to be useful, they would cultivate the moral affections of their people, they would give religious energy to the Will by pointing the way to the sanctification of the spirit by a true-hearted belief of the truth. To this class Preaching is no pastime. The burden of one Sabbath removed, the burden of the next comes on; and in a brief while the young man, with full and ruddy cheeks, begins to wear the lines of care and -anxiety; and they who read those lines aright say, as the king did to Nehemiah,-"This is nothing else but sorrow of heart." Let those who make the office of the Preacher nothing more than a business, and put it on a level with

every other form of intellectual effort, explain the reason of this, and tell us why it is that places of honor and profit are given up for the humblest pulpit and the smallest pecuniary return? This debasing the Pulpit is a sad revelation of character.

The office of the Preacher, like any other profession or calling, opens its significance and responsibilities with experience. There are many in it who never would have entered it had these things been known at the outset; they then would have despairingly asked, “Who is sufficient for these things?" And what is it that has made so very limited the candidates for the ministry? A chief cause, I believe, to be, the numerous discussions of the office of the Preacher, which make it a matter of such a breadth of duty and such a demand for constant effort, that there is no heart for the attempt. The lamentation is heard all over the country respecting the scarcity of Students in Divinity; and this is the more remarkable from the fact, that in no department of Education is so much gratuitous instruction given as in the Theological. In the professions of Law and Medicine, in Teaching, and other offices, young men see as much to be done for humanity as in the Pulpit, with nothing like the humiliations which i are connected with the duties of the Pulpit. A preacher may live a life of uprightness-he may give the most undoubted evidences of devotion to the moral interests of his people, and yet one sermon which is regarded as ill-judged or untimely, will settle the continuance of his stay as short with that people. Not that the people decide this result always, but the preacher's heart is broken there.

Where is there any thing like it in Law, or Medicine, or School-keeping? Where does one bad case in court or in the sick chamber or school, work such an issue as this? No where. In these professions where infinitely better are the circumstances of the practitioners to guard against arousing prejudice and ill feeling, one error of treatment does not set a community on fire, unless it be a most palpable case of maltreatment, and then the dealing is first with the man. Yet I have known one sermon, carefully prepared and preached out of the inmost soul of the preacher, to break the bonds that united him to a people he loved to serve-a people endeared to him by most sacred remembrances, and with whom he would have been willing to die. Sad revelations are made by the people by the manner in which they deal with such a sermon,-a

manner that shows more haste and passion than could possibly have been exhibited by any preacher; and the contrast is the greater when it is remembered, that they are many in council, but he was alone,—they gather in their places of conversation and debate from time to time, but he came from the solitude of his study, and, it may be, had more of God's presence than they; for it may be he sought it more to guide him in the discharge of his duty toward them. But the worst of this rashness is, His good name is periled; for it is sad to think how much the good name of the preacher is in the keeping of his people. No wonder if he does become doubtful and suspecting, and afterwards puts on the Jesuit's cunning and the statesman's diplomacy, imitating, at times, the Silence of Jesus when he spake to his accusers not a word, having in vain asked, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of that evil." Who does not mourn over these things when he sees the few reapers in the great harvest field of the ministry, and sees also how many have been made to abandon the field because there was no swing for their scythe or sickle. Much, very much is the plea needed for a better appreciation of the fact, that there can not be the passion or carelessness that many suppose, where the Preacher ventures on ground where he has to meet the sins of his own people. What has he to gain? He thinks only of the lodgment of the truth where it will grow, not daring to wait for fairer skies above him. He complains not when affront is taken and his ministry is left; for such conduct only makes a revelation in the people that might have been avoided. In instances in my own ministry this has been the case when I did not dream of the persons who took offence being present, and thought not in the least of them in connection with the sermons preached; one sermon was on Punctual attendance on Sabbath Worship; the other was on those who neglect to provide properly for their families being worse than infidels -as the Apostle Paul asserts. The persons who applied those sermons to themselves have never heard me since, and most certainly they only made the revelation of the effect of the sermons. On another occasion, in preaching on the reasons why Universalism was not better understood, I made a remark such as had, it seems, been made by a lady against Universalism, and to my utter astonishment I learned the next day that her husband and brother declared they would horsewhip me! I called on the lady immediately, though a stranger, and proposed to take the

whipping privately from either her husband or her brother, as two on one would be hardly fair. I convinced them that they were all strangers to me, and that I was a stranger to any opposition they entertained towards Universalism. Once started by the idea of a personality, every thing that was said (assumed a personal reference, and there was no wonder that a revelation of passion was made. Had I dreamed of any such result, I might have managed to get out the same idea without kindling the touchwood that I did not know was near me. Persons have come to me with questions as to my intending such and such a sermon for them, and never IN A SINGLE CASE, did I know of the person being in the congregation at the time of the preaching, nor were they thought of in the preparation of the sermon.

The Preacher sought to find out "acceptable words;" says Solomon, "and that which was written was upright, words of truth." Let it be remarked, that the language is not, "The Preacher sought to find out acceptable ideas," for that will never do, otherwise than in the advocacy of the great truths which unite the People and Preacher. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words-language that should enable him to make himself understood by his people-language that would not, at the same time, outrage uprightness or the truth. And when we consider the imperfection of language at best-the imperfect command of language by the best of writers or speakers-the different degrees of culture in a congregation- the different moods of mind among the people, and the singular misconstructions common among the members of every congregation, the wonder is, that there are not more sermons rejected than are really set aside. These facts, together with the imperfection of Memory, especially in reference to the precise language used and the same collocation of words, should incline a people to exercise a generous bearing towards their Preacher when it may seem to them he does

A CUSTOM prevailed among the Jews of making public demonstrations of sympathy, whenever friends were visited with seasons of affliction and sorrow. The mourners usually, on such occasions, embraced all the friendly acquaintances of the bereaved, a portion of whom, during a period of some thirty days, methodically devoted themselves to the delicate office of consoling the sorrowing. This custom explains the language of John in speaking of Mary after the death of her brother, "The Jews which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there."

Though a custom of an early and comparatively rude age of the world, there is yet something in it that addresses itself directly and strongly to our better feelings. It indicates a native, spontaneous goodness. It seems to spring from a warm and active humanity. It would tell us in language which at least our hearts can understand, that feeling is not all dead; that holy and sympathetic emotions still throb under these fleshly forms; that the soul still understands suffering, and responds to it with whatever it knows of assuasion and com

fort. Doubtless this custom, Jewish and ancient, and which from its exceeding appropriateness and the benign utility of its simplest offices appears to have sprung from the purest sympa. thies of our nature, was, in many cases abused and vitiated by being observed as a mere heartless ceremony. In such instances it would be nothing but a frigid formality, and to the heart of sensibility the sheerest and cruelest of mockeries. But then such is the perversion of the custom from its primary object and natural offices; and abating from its claims all that can be done on this ground, there is something indescribably beautiful in human sympathy thus communing with human sorrow; in the gentle, perhaps trembling hand wiping away another's tears; in the spontaneous out-flowing of that unmingled pity of soul which thus, in truth, "weeps with those that weep." Besides, what a testimony do such tender offices bear to the divinity of our nature; the exquisite fineness and delicacy of its sensibilities; the mysterious but holy affinities that link it so strongly to those around it? And I doubt not but many a Jewish heart has been blessed, relieved and strengthened by the comforting and assuasive power of this emotion, just as we know the same thing, only more perfectly perhaps, has been done under the sacred influences of Christianity.

"She goeth unto the grave to weep there." Why should those comforting friends of Mary think she was going again to the tomb of Lazarus to water it anew with her tears? Why was she thus appointed to weep? Or, to make the question general, why has man been made a being subject to sorrow, susceptible to the pain

and bitterness of affliction? Under the economy of a wise and good Creator, snch an appointment must surely have some specific purposes. Sorrow cannot be wholly accidental; it must have its uses. It is the lot of mortal beings to suffer under the hand of trial, disappointment and affliction; these things come upon them in every period of the present life, and they are sometimes awful to be borne. Such an ordination surely must have some meaning, must be the means of operating to the sufferers some good. What, then, are the uses of sorrow? What good comes of it, or will ever come of it?

On this question of sorrow and its uses, there is much said that is vague, and much that is erroneous. Some men seem to look upon sorrow as a kind of accidental misfortune, a thing that happens without being in any way provided for. But how unwelcome, how oppressive