mind and affect the heart; then the preacher would be always confined to one neighborhood of subjects, and numerous subordinate ones that are "profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness," must be almost excluded or receive at best a very limited, occasional, and unsatisfactory consideration. Such is not the lesson obtained from the Scriptures. Christ is continually exhibited in the Old Testament annals. They contain the history of His Church as waiting and looking for His appearing. Christ is preached in the whole system of the Mosaic institutions, which were but a shadow of the good things to be found in Him. The tabernacle, with its ark and mercy seat; its altars and furniture; its offerings and daily servicethe priesthood, the pillar of cloud, the manna, the rock and the citiesof refuge-all speak of Christ. "To Him give all the prophets witness. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." How entirely every page of the New Testament is pervaded with the same, I need not say. But we do not see, in the New Testament or in the Old, such a confinement to the vicinity of the cross, that no distinct subject is relinquished, till it has led to some distinct exhibition of the way of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Every thing has a bearing that way, but does not fall directly into that line. Its course is bent, like the orbit of a planet, by the attraction of that centre; so that though it may never be turned directly, it is always inclined toward the latter, and rendering continual homage to its supremacy. The inspired writers with one common centre, occupied a range of great extent and variety, while at every point they could receive light from the cross, and say, "Behold the Lamb of God."'

This Charge furnishes an excellent illustration of the section in our Discipline, on the preaching of Christ :

:

Quest. 1. What is the best general method of preaching? 'Answ. 1. To convince: 2. To offer Christ: 3. To invite: 4. To build up and to do this in some measure in every sermon.

Quest. 2. What is the most effectual way of preaching Christ? Answ. The most effectual way of preaching Christ, is to preach Him in all His offices; and to declare His law, as well as His Gospel, both to believers and unbelievers. Let us strongly and closely insist upon inward and outward holiness in all its branches.'

The concluding paragraph contains some remarks on a subject which we think seriously demands the attention of the Christian Church. We are not aware that they are particularly appropriate to our own denomination; nor do we believe that the author had us in his mind in making them. Yet it is possible that some individuals among us may be culpable. Indeed there is liability to error in this way wherever the necessity of religious emotion is felt and inculcated. But the error should be guarded against. It consists in human efforts to produce excitement; the adoption of trick and stratagem purely to create feeling. By various little nameless buffooneries and mountebank manoeuvres the imaginations and sympathies of a congregation, at least of the ignorant and undiscerning part, may be wrought up to a high pitch, and tumult and distraction follow. The result is that the intelligent are disgusted and the ignorant deluded. Christianity acknowledges none of this factitious aid. It approaches us only with

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holy, Gospel means, and these are eminently simple and efficient. With the law to convince of sin, and awaken the conscience; with a Savior to procure pardon and peace; and with a Holy Spirit to renew and seal the heart; it asks nothing of man but a clear, faithful, powerful exhibition of its truths, and then the combined influence of united, agonizing, believing prayer. The more of these the better. But it wants no human and unauthorized contrivances. It does its work better without them. If they had been needful, we should have been told so in the Book. But there we find nothing of it. It was by the foolishness of preaching,' the apostles expected to save souls; and then they exhorted the disciples to pray always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel.' Such was the model of our own Wesley. Powerful excitement, it is true, attended his ministry, but it was always produced by authorized means-'the word of God and prayer.' There was no spiritual jugglery about him. No man was more opposed than he to the adoption of unauthorized and unscriptural expedients. He knew well the difference between the religion of the imagination* and that of the heart, and was well aware that human inventions may create the one but never can produce the other-may compass us about with sparks of our own kindling,' but cannot kindle the true fire of the sanctuary. In fact every means to produce fictitious excitement militates against genuine emotion just as a counterfeit injures a reality. He that mistakes the excitement of the imagination for the religion of the heart, is apt to be satisfied with a spurious substitute instead of seeking the soul-saving power. The author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm has some good thoughts upon this subject-The religion of the heart may be supplanted by a religion of the imagination, just in the same way that the social affections are often dislodged by factitious sensibilities. Every one knows that an artificial excitement of all the kind and tender emotions of our nature may take place through the medium of the imagination. Hence the power of poetry and the drama. But every one must also know that these feelings, however vivid, and seemingly pure and salutary they may be, and however nearly they may resemble the genuine workings of the soul, are so far from producing the same softening effect upon the character, that they tend rather to indurate the heart. * * * * * A process of perversion and of induration precisely similar may have place also among the religious emotions: for the laws of human nature are uniform, whatever may be the immediate cause which puts them in action; and a fictitious piety corrupts or petrifies the heart not less certainly than does a romantic sentimentality.'

But we are detaining our readers too long from the more immediate subject of our remarks.

after a great in

Let us make no

Let us strive, my brethren,' says the bishop, crease of faith, in the preaching of Christ crucified. division of confidence between this Divine ordinance and others of human "art and man's device." There be some who seem to hope

* See his letters to Geo. Bell, and his sermon on 'Knowing Christ after the flesh.' VOL. VI.-July, 1835.

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for but little effect from the plain, faithful preaching of the cross, except in proportion as it is mixed up with certain artificial expedients of arresting attention and exciting emotion. There is an appetite for excitement and novelty in the mode of awakening and converting sinners, which seems to be rapidly increasing in some quarters of the Church of Christ, as well in an insatiate thirst for more potent stimulants, as in the number of its subjects. It is lamentably discarding the simplicity of the Gospel, and substituting a kind of preaching, which, with a special pretence of faithfulness and much redundancy and painful irreverence in the use of Divine names, is sadly wanting in Divine things and spirit; laying almost exclusive stress upon a few disjointed members of Gospel truth, and producing most deformed examples of Gospel efficacy. There is something too tame and sober in the old paths of inspired preachers, for the taste of some in these days. To teach as well as preach-to go the round of Christian truth, instead of being confined to one or two of its more striking parts, has become the "strange work" of many. To excite the sensibilities by swollen representations, rather than to enlighten the conscience by sober and practical exposition of Scripture; to produce effect by drawing lines of visible separation among the people, by bringing the incipient anxieties of the heart into dangerous and unbecoming publicity, and by the hurrying forward of those whose minds are yet unsettled and unexamined, to an open profession of religion and perhaps a forward lead in devotional exercises, has become the mournful characteristic of much of the ministry that is called evangelical. It may boast many converts; but time will show that it boasts "the lame, the halt, and the blind." It is but another road, though a very short one, to all formality, coldness, and spiritual death. There is such a thing as a zealous formality—a stimulated coldnessan excited corpse. Be such reliances, as I have described, far from you, my brethren! Be jealous of any measure that would divide your faith in the efficacy of the simple preaching of Christ crucified, accompanied "with all prayer and supplication in the spirit." Seek your power, directly, entirely, in the influences of the Holy Ghost to awaken, convince, convert, and sanctify the sinner. Behold your means in whatever will contribute to the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ. Use such means with importunate waiting upon God for his blessing, and your ministry "shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever it doeth shall prosper." While continually laboring under the practical conviction that God only "giveth the increase;" endeavor so to believe in his promises, as to feel the animating assurance, that God will give increase to the diligent application of that which He has chosen for His chief instrument in the conversion of sinners. Have faith in God! Preach as believing not only in the unspeakable importance of the truth you deliver, but also in the power and faithfulness of your Master to make it mighty to the casting down of whatever opposes the Gospel in the hearts of your people. There is power in faith to remove mountains! One of the first steps toward the promotion of your greater usefulness, is the prayer of the apostle : "Lord, increase our faith." May the Lord in his great love wherewith he loveth us, be pleased to pour out upon you

a spirit of grace and supplication, that, your faith being strengthened and your zeal quickened to all diligence and faithfulness, many may be added unto the Lord under your ministry, and "adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." "

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We now take leave of Bishop M'Ilvaine, bidding him God speed in his sacred calling and praying that the sentiments of the Episcopal Charge may be echoed in demonstration of the Spirit and of power' from every pulpit in the diocess of Ohio. If the venerated Wesley were now alive would he not rejoice to see the Church he loved coming back to the spirit of her own articles, homilies, and liturgy? He would see the spirit of her Hookers and Pearsons, her Leightons and Bevridges, her Barrows and Burkitts, so long lain in abeyance, breaking forth again in the nineteenth century, and a Richmond, a Cunningham, a Wilson, and others in England, joined by many kindred spirits in America, all 'standing in the way' and asking for the old paths' and teaching the good way' wherein men should walk to find rest for their souls.' Had this been the spirit of the English Church in Mr. Wesley's day, they never would have driven him out into the highways and hedges, and literally compelled him to form a distinct denomination to perpetuate the good he did. Yet who among us does not rejoice in this fact? He was secretly led on by HIM who makes the wrath of man to praise Him.' Had it not been for this the goodly fabric of Methodism would never have come into being. But now that it has been reared, who does not see that it has been for the saving of the nations? By the energy of her character, by the organization of her ministry, by the diffusiveness and the purity of her zeal, by her own internal arrangements for the cultivation of personal piety and Christian experience, and the singleness of her purposes, she has spread out into the world, and sent a portion of her spirit to animate the formerly lifeless bodies of other denominations. How much religion was there in England when Wesley rose? Let the fact declare, that for preaching 'justifi cation by faith in Christ alone,' ('articulus ipse stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ,') and the convictions which followed, he was driven from the Church! And how much piety was there in the American Churches when Whitefield came over? Whitefield lit his torch at Wesley's altar, and bearing the flaming brand across the Atlantic, kindled the same fire in America that was already burning brightly in England. Then there arose the new lights,' as a term of reproach to indicate men of the new spirit, possessing the spirit that has now found its way in a good measure into all the Churches. We rejoice in it, we say again, and we doubt not that Wesley in heaven rejoices to see the diffusion of those principles which he spent his life in proclaiming. Meanwhile may the Church which he was the instrument of establishing ever be true to her own character. May her first principles never be abandoned, may her hands never be weakened, may the fire never burn low upon her altars; but with the same steadiness, devotedness, and singleness of purpose may she go on to spread Scriptural holiness all over the lands.' While we strive to keep up to the spirit of the age in all improvable things, let us keep up our own spirit in all heavenly things, and if we are true to that, to our latest generations the language of our dying founder shall be ours, The best of all is, God is with us.'

Before closing this article, may I be permitted to add a few words on another branch of this subject. It has appeared to us that there are two very prevalent errors in much of the preaching of the present day. First, our intellectual sermons are not always sufficiently practical.Secondly, our practical sermons are not always sufficiently intellectual. Many of the preachers who are characterized by deep research, and laborious thought, seem to take up the dogmas of their sects like party combatants, and their preaching is but an exhibition of theological gladiatorship. Or they select only such texts and subjects for the pulpit, as afford the greatest room for grand and magnificent display. One would be led to suppose, that their aim was not so much to adapt their subjects to the wants and edification of their hearers, as to the advantageous display of their own intellectual superiority. Yet is not this most absurd-and even humanly judged, most unbusiness like? What would be thought of a lawyer or a statesman, who, on rising to plead a cause, or urge the passage of a bill, instead of taking up the argument in a common-sense and business manner, should only dwell on those points that afford the greatest scope to display his imagination, or show forth the brilliancy of his genius? Suppose his design should be to exhibit his intellectual powers favorably to his auditory, rather than to substantiate his claims, and rather to entrance them with his eloquence, than to convince them by his arguments: his hearers indeed, might admire his talents, but they would not think highly of his efficiency. But, meanwhile, what would his clients or constituents say? They would prefer one half hour's plain, sound, earnest exhibition of their claims, to all his fine flourish, and deep-studied imbecility. The preacher's case is much the same. The object of the Gospel ministry is to bring sinners to Christ, and then to build them up in Scriptural holiness; and whenever this is not apparent throughout a discourse, when it is not the pervading spirit of the whole, when it strikes not upon the mind of the hearer as such, it is a mere perversion and profanation. It is splendid nonsense, or logical absurdity. What will Heaven think of one who is by profession a minister of reconciliation between God and man, an ambassador of God to a fallen world, who studies the entertainment of his hearers instead of their conversion and edification? Whose design is,

'To court a grin, where he should woo a soul.'

This indeed is pitiful, judged by human rules; but according to the word of God, it is worse than madness. Let the conduct of the apostles be ours also; We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.' And let all our sermons say in spirit and purpose, Now then we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.'

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Neither are they to be excused who seem to think that the design to be useful exempts them from obligation to study. What! shall one man study utility, less than another display? Does it require less study, clearly, effectually, powerfully, to exhibit the purity and claims of the law, and the provisions of the Gospel, to convince, to awake, to instruct in all Christian doctrines and obligations, than merely to exhibit a little spice of human wit and ingenuity? Is the object less worthy and important? Certainly not; nor shall we be excused for