PREACHING. We have of late often seen and heard it said, that Ichabod is written upon the pulpit, that the days of its power have gone by, that the preacher is fast losing the influence of a living voice, and becoming a mere item of church furniture. It will be admitted on all hands, that the pulpit has ceased by prescriptive right to awe down opposition and to compel assent, that stupidity can no longer be made infallible, or arrogance supreme, by gown and bands, that the clergy have lost the power, which they once possessed, of changing by their dictum bitter into sweet, or wrong into right. In the downfall of clerical domination every honest minister, every good Christian must rejoice. It is a happy thing for the Church, that her priestly office can no longer command respect and confidence for those who abuse it, or are unworthy of it. But, in the opinion of many, the pulpit has lost with its factitious importance much of its legitimate efficacy. Many of our most faithful ministers complain that they have not the ear of the people, that negligence and skepticism abound and grow, that a worldly and sensual spirit is fast supplanting Christian faith in the general heart, that the ordinances and institutions of religion are losing their hold upon the strong-minded, the busy, and the active, and retain within their grasp those only, who are too weak to doubt, or too timid to disobey. There seems to exist in many quarters a feeling, that existing forms and modes of administration have done their work, and have become effete, that the age has outgrown preaching and praying, the font, and the holy table. There are those who would substitute the debating club for the church, lay teaching for sermons, tumultuous assemblages, where every man should have his own psalm, and interpretation, and prophecy, for the method and holy beauty of the sanctuary service. We cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that there is in the community a vague restlessness and agitation, a dissatisfaction with the present, a yearning after novelty, a distaste for the old paths in which the fathers walked. Never was there such a Babel-like confusion of tongues proclaiming, Lo, here is Christ, and, Lo, there. Everywhere are men taking their stand by newly dug cisterns, and crying out, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the VOL. XXXIII. 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. I. 8 waters. It concerns those who love the institutions of religion to search and see, whether there be indeed anything to authorize or justify this uneasiness; whether there be any serious and tangible deficiencies in our religious institutions, or their administration. But, first, lest we waste our efforts in seeking to apply a remedy where none is needed, it may be well for us to ascertain to our satisfaction where the fault does not lie. The fault does not lie, as we think, with the clerical office in itself considered. So long as men recognise each other as social beings, and meet to strengthen and encourage each other in every good cause and enterprise, they will meet for public worship and religious instruction. So long as the services of religion demand mind as well as heart, they will need more diligent preparation, than one immersed in secular care and business can bestow. He, who on one day in the seven would take of the deep things of God, and show them to his brethren, must, for the remaining six days, be much alone in earnest communion with the divine word and its Author. Moreover, while we admit that Holiness to the Lord ought to be inscribed on the counting-room and the workshop, on men's tools and their merchandise, yea, as saith the prophet, on the very bells of the horses, this state of things does not yet exist in any part of Christendom. In the present mixed and imperfect condition of society, there are some associations cleaving to almost every department of secular business, there are collisions of interest and feeling, jostlings in the market-place and the forum, to which the best of men are liable, which would interfere with general edification, and detract from the calm and solemn dignity of religious services, were they conducted by citizens from the common walks of life. Then, again, an order of men, set apart for religious purposes, enjoy a point of view eminently favorable for the observation of society, and for the moral criticism of life and manners; a position a little remote from the arena of active life is essential to a clear perspective. The clergy indeed have their own weaknesses and faults; but they are not those of the merchant, the mechanic, or the politician. Where these err and are blind, the clergyman, from his peculiar position, will be likely to see clearly, and may thus be able to hold up before them the mirror of gospel truth, and to show them their own moral features. But men from the busy walks of life, by their com mon liabilities and temptations, are rendered blind to each other's faults, and cannot hold up to each other the true mirror. A distinct clerical profession is peculiarly necessary in a country, swept, as ours perpetually is, by whirlwinds of excitement and infatuation, amidst which the clergy alone retain a charmed indemnity. When, a few years ago, the mania of overtrading and mad speculation passed like wild fire from city to town, from town to village, filling the land with broken obligations and shattered hopes, the mechanic deserted his workshop and the laborer his spade, the merchant left the paths of legitimate enterprise, the farmer bartered his paternal acres for estates as unsubstantial as his own shadow, the clergy alone remained unscathed, at once to rebuke the reckless hurry to be rich, and to show the finger of a retributive providence in the loss and misery that ensued. So too, when, at a later date, political jealousy and hatred poisoned the fountains of social feeling, when vast masses of men overran the country as the torchbearers of mutual alienation and strife, by whom but by the clergy was there lifted a pacific voice, saying, sirs, ye are brethren, why wrong ye one another? These are specimens of the many subjects and occasions, on which the clergy are the only disinterested and impartial lookers on, and thus alone have the power to rebuke excess, to reclaim from error, to infuse the great principles of forbearance and rectitude. We next remark that there is nothing worthy a reasonable man's complaint, in the religious forms of our New England churches generally. It is sometimes said that our forms have become dead. We have yet to learn that they were ever alive, and therefore capable of death. Forms are simply the relation, which religion bears to time and space. They are merely the où or of the living spirit. Their only office is to separate, by accessory circumstances of deep solemnity, a sufficient portion of time and space from common to sacred uses. What they do beyond this (except among the grossly uncultivated and sensual) cramps and cripples, instead of aiding the spirit of devotion, which demands freedom to seek out its own channels, and to breathe its own spontaneous utterances from man to God and from God to man. Those, who are over curious with regard to form, who deem a new genuflexion to mark a new era, who look upon some untried mode of singing or praying as a new gate to heaven, however they may make parade of spirituality, betray a bond age to beggarly elements, which befits the babe in Christ rather than the master in Israel. Our congregational forms, when appropriately observed, separate and sanctify as much of time and space as is needed for public and social worship; and we prize them, because they do no more than this, because they are dead, and because, being dead, they are flexible, and not stiff enough to seem alive and to stand of themselves, like the armor of the Knights of old. We are not then to ascribe aught that we may regret in the posture of the times to the ministry, as an institution, or to our accustomed forms of worship. Let us now inquire wherein the preaching of the word has been and is deficient and faulty. 1. Preaching has been too technical. A great deal of harm has been done by technical phraseology in religion. The Bible has been interpreted in very much the same way, in which lawyers interpret a statute book. The attempt has been, not so much to reach the actual purpose of the prophet, apostle, or evangelist, and to enter into his feelings and spirit, as to determine what construction the mere words taken one by one, will literally bear, what meaning can be tortured out of every separate clause, or sentence. Now the language of any particular writing ought to be interpreted in the spirit, in which it was used by the writer. He, who draws up a legal document, uses technical phrases, assigns a precise and strictly circumscribed signification to every word, says nothing poetically, uses neither metaphor, hyperbole, nor the language of excited feeling. But no one can imagine that John, Paul, and Peter 'wrote thus, that they attached peculiar and technical significations to the words that they used, and weighed every phrase in the scale of scholastic logic. No. They wrote on subjects, on which they felt most deeply, and their words fell warm from their hearts. Their writings were the simple outflow of full souls, the story of him whom they most fervently loved, their fatherly exhortations and warnings to their spiritual children, their expressions of glad amazement at the new light which had broken in upon their minds through the teaching of Jesus. They wrote in a style wholly unartificial, often highly figurative; and their writings should be interpreted with these facts in view. But theologians and preachers have taken everything literally. Where St. Paul has indulged in a metaphor, they have found in it a new doctrine. Where John pours out in burning words a love too deep for utterance, they have cooled down the_glowing page into an icy mass of school divinity. Where Peter with vivid eloquence points to the crucified Redeemer as the world's exemplar, they have moulded the vivid features of the picture into a cold dogmatic statement of this or that theology of the atonement. It is thus that have grown up those orthodox and heterodox bodies of divinity, (aptly termed bodies, as being utterly destitute of soul,) of whose gaunt skeleton forms we may well say, the letter killeth. This anatomizing style of writing and of preaching has not been refrained from, even on subjects appertaining to the most recondite portions and elements of man's inward experience. The process of regeneration has been described with a minute precision, as if it were a process in mechanics. That spirit of the Infinite God, whose visitings are like the viewless wind, has been weighed, and measured, and stretched upon the Procrustes-bed of polemic divinity. That life of God within the soul, which through a wide diversity of gifts and operations may breathe the same spirit, has been narrowed down and rounded off to one unvarying shape and mould. That fervent piety, whose depths of love and devotion God alone can fathom, has had the line and the compass stretched over it, and the lead of shallow speculation dropped into it, till men have learned to look upon it as something petty, mechanical, and grovelling, the work of a moment, and the occupant of some little corner of the soul. This technical style of preaching has done much to deprive the pulpit of its interest, and of its hold upon strong and fervent, nay, in some instances, upon truly religious minds. Nor have we, who have abjured the complex creeds of past times, altogether escaped these tendencies. In denying those very creeds, we are prone to throw our negations in a dogmatic and technical form, while we too often discuss the great principles of truth and righteousness, as if they were doctrines that admitted of strict logical statement and definition. Now, in the sense in which the word doctrine is commonly used, we do not believe that the gospel teaches any doctrines, that is, we do not believe that there are any religious truths or principles, which our Master or his apostles intended that the Church should propound in set propositions, such as could be numbered or placed in array in a written creed. On the other hand, the great principles of the gospel, though simple and easy to be understood, |