labors should all be gathered up and classified. Until this can be done with candor and discrimination, the author is not prepared to proceed with his work.

The finest specimens of truthful and life-like biography are found in the Bible. Saints though many of them were, and though the success of the book, and the prevalence and popularity of its system of religion, depended more upon the purity of the lives of its friends and advocates than that of any other book or system, yet the whole truth is invariably told. The drunkenness of Noah, the incest of Lot, the adultery of David, the idolatry of Solomon, the temerity and consequent fall and profanity of Peter, the unbelief of Thomas, the unjustifiable dissension of Paul and Barnabas, and the apostasy and suicide of Judas Iscariot, all are narrated with a most scrupulous fidelity to truth.

The work should be executed in such a way that its influence upon the mind of the reader should be moral in the highest degree. This is often a delicate task, requiring great discrimination in the selection of facts, great care and skill in grouping them together, and a familiar acquaintance with the principles of human nature. Where the entire life has been an unbroken career of guilt, posterity will suffer no loss if never informed that such a monster of impurity had an existence. The name of the wicked should be allowed to rot, unless it is in some way connected with veritable history. This is the merited doom which inspiration pronounces upon it, and the natural tendency, by the very constitution of things, is in the same direction. This is a salutary provision of Divine Providence. We act not wisely, therefore, if we strive to arrest this tendency, and to perpetuate the remembrance of the wicked, All unmixed evil should be avoided, as we shun whatever is offensive by its putrescence. Hence the lives of highwaymen and pirates, of courtesans and debauchees, of mountebanks and swindlers, whipped or unwhipped of justice, hung or unhung, should not be written. Men who have shown no respect for wholesome institutions, who have trampled upon the best established principles of morality, and who have waged an un

ceasing war against the dearest interests of humanity, cannot be too soon forgotten.

But there are characters made of great excellence and great defects; these elements apparently hold each other in even balance. When seen in real life, they excite, in turn, the opposite emotions of admiration and aversion. When this is the case, the writer, wittingly or unwittingly, may make the great excellences lend even a charm to the defects. This not only may be, but, we regret to add, often has been done. One such book is enough to sap and mine the morals of the youth of an entire nation. It is enough to have rumor spread through the land a report of the immorality and infidelity of men who wear the tiara and keys of intellect. That the aid of letters should be proffered to the same end is unpardonable. If an author is tempted to this from want of bread, society would do well to allow him to retire. upon a pension, or to settle upon him an annuity, rather than endure the evils which he might by his pen inflict upon the morals and the faith of the public. Biographies of fictitious characters have always been open to this censure; and well would it be for the interests of morality and religion, if they alone deserved it.

It was a part of our design, in the preparation of this article, to have noticed the different forms in which Memoirs may be written; also the relation between Biography and History; and, finally, the usefulness of this kind of literature. But we have already filled our pages, and must defer a discussion of these most interesting topics to a future issue.

ARTICLE V.-CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE IN ITS RELATION TO MINISTERIAL SUCCESS.

NOTHING on earth is so powerful as goodness; nothing like it to control the heart. But goodness, powerful as it is, unattended by a mightier influence, will not work that transformation of character which it is the object of the preacher to effect. Even the spotless life of the Son of God did not mould into its own likeness those who enjoyed the advantages of his personal ministry. The Day of Pentecost, that day of the Spirit's special influence, added to the Church. more disciples than many days of labor by Christ and his apostles, before these ministers were endued with the Spirit from on High. The Spirit's influence in the ministry, and, by the ministry, in the hearts of others, works into the soul that love of the truth, that intensity of Christian feeling, that persistence in Christian effort, which are indispensable to the progress of the cause of Christ.

As a denomination, we Baptists have always insisted upon piety as essential to ministerial character and usefulness. Human learning, and the discipline of the schools, we have sometimes, in theory, undervalued; but a renovated heart, enlarged Christian experience, profound views of the law of God and of the gospel of Christ, never. The rule, that "no man has a moral right to preach beyond his own experience," we may not have rigidly adhered to, but we have not knowingly ordained to the work of the ministry a man who has not given credible evidence that he is in Christ Jesus, and therefore a new creature. More than this. We have looked to our preachers, whether evangelists, missionaries, or pastors, for higher attainments in piety, for stronger faith, intenser zeal, livelier hope, profounder humility, more glowing love; in a word, for larger experience in all the graces of a perfect Christian character and life, than has been required for simple membership in a church. Love for what has been called experimental preaching prevails so largely with the mass of our people, that the deep murmur of unsat

isfied desire will always manifest itself, if our pastor's sermons do not show the communings of his own heart with the inner life of the truths which he utters. Our tastes and our characters, at least in this country, were formed by a class of ministers, whose experience of the working of gospel truth upon the heart and life was especially rich and instructive. Truth, as it lay in their minds, was not a cold intellection. It was emotional; it stirred their souls to their lowest depths; it aroused their activities, nerved their energies, and made their intellects, their consciences, their wills, work, and work for God and humanity. A woe they felt was upon them, if they did not preach, and preach the gospel; that, and nothing but that, met the cravings of their own souls, met the wants of their own case as sinners. Christ crucified, risen, interceding, was the basis on which rested their hopes; and to them it seemed that nothing but the same atoning sacrifice and finished righteousness, and prevailing intercession, could save a soul from death, and hide a multitude of sins.

Having these views of our denominational sentiment, believing that these views are entirely Scriptural, and that the presentation of them will not be untimely, we shall offer to our readers some thoughts upon Christian experience in its relation to ministerial success.

No man, whose heart has not been renewed, can understand the truths which constitute the gospel, and upon the preaching of which all ministerial success must depend.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The natural man knoweth not the things of the Spirit. The late William Wilberforce, a man of distinguished piety, on one occasion prevailed on William Pitt to accompany him to hear the eminently spiritual Richard Cecil. The preacher delivered a discourse on one of the leading points of Christian faith and duty, a discourse which struck Mr. Wilberforce as being unusually imbued with the spirit of fervent piety and evangelical truth. On returning from the place of worship Mr. Wilberforce asked Mr. Pitt what he thought of the sermon. The answer of the illustrious statesman was:

I did not understand one word of all that I have heard. Indeed, I could not have been more ignorant of the preacher's meaning, if, instead

of addressing his audience in English, he had spoken all the time in an unknown tongue.

The difficulty thus complained of by the Prime Minister of England, has been felt and acknowledged by not a few erudite men, who have listened to the gospel without spiritual profiting. The eyes of their understanding were closed, that they could not see; and their ears heavy, that they could not hear.

Dr. Chalmers, in his sermon on spiritual blindness, says:

The Bible is often made the subject of a much higher scholarship than the mere reading of it. It may be the theme of many a laborious commentary. The light of cotemporaneous history may be made to shine upon it. Those powers and habits of criticism, which are of so much avail towards the successful elucidation of the mind and meaning of other authors, may all be transferred to that volume of which God is the author, and still, after having exhausted the uttermost resources of scholarship, these critics may find themselves laboring at a threshold of height and of difficulty which they cannot scale. As if struck with blindness, like the men of Sodom, they weary themselves in vain to find the door. After having reared their stately argumentations about the message of peace, they have no peace-about the word of faith, they have no faith-—about the doctrine of godliness, they have no godliness.

Germany, perhaps more than any other country, has had these lights, which were no lights; but England, also, and the United States, have had not a few men of great learning, of giant intellects, of noble natural impulses, who have brought their vast stores of knowledge to the elucidation of Divine truth; and still, after all their efforts to force their way into the regions of spiritual illumination, they have known less of the doctrine of Jesus Christ than the man of the humblest capacity, who has been taught by the Spirit of the living God, who has "hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes."

Divine things are not objects merely for the speculative understanding. They have to do with the emotions, the sentiments. Reason cannot evolve them. Association cannot suggest them. Imagination cannot compass them. The faculties to which they are addressed are not perceptive, suggestive, reasoning, imaginative, tasteful only. They are emotive, feeling. The man who should say, I comprehend an intellection which I have not known, would talk as intelligently as the one who should say, I comprehend a feeling