layman may ask questions which a clergyman cannot answer, and the grove of the academy may be perverted into a beargarden. It is true that the services of the Lord's house require a dignified stability, and a minister may give too great indulgence to the love of change. A wise man must make his own rules for his peculiar exigencies, and avoid an extreme either of uniformity or of variety. Alluding to Dr. Payson's diversified exertions for the welfare of his people, his biographer aptly quotes the well-known lines: "And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies; When this inventive pastor had lost the sense of feeling in his right arm and left side, and so had become incapable of making a gesture with his right arm, he preached one of his last and most affecting sermons. "On pronouncing the blessing, he requested the congregation to resume their seats. He descended from the pulpit, and took his station in front of it, and commenced a most solemn appeal to the assembly. He began with a recognition of that feeling in an auditory, which leads them to treat a minister's exhortations as if they were merely a discharge of professional duty, by one placed above them and having little sympathy with them. I now put aside the minister,' said he; I come down among you; place myself on a visible equality; I address you as a fellowman, a friend, a brother, and fellow-traveller to the bar of God; as one equally interested with yourselves in the truths which I have been declaring.' He then gave vent to the struggling emotions of his heart, in a strain of affectionate entreaty, expressing the most anxious desires for their salvation....Though his withered arm hung helpless by his side, yet he seemed instinct with life," etc. One man can do at one time what he cannot wisely do again, and what another man cannot wisely do at any time. But every pastor can do much in so diversifying his services on the Sabbath as to make his audience expect a freshness and new life in every new service. Nothing repels so many from the sanctuary as the apprehension of tediousness. Dr. Johnson's remark on tediousness in an author is emphatically true of tediousness in a preacher: "It is the most fatal of all faults. Negligence or errors are single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole; other faults are endured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself. He that is weary the first hour is more weary the second, as bodies forced into motion contrary to their tendency pass more and more slowly through every successive interval of space. Each of the preceding rules may be explained and modified by the sixth and last one. In order to maintain a permanent interest in the services of the sanctuary, they should be appropriate. They should be appropriate to the theme of the discourse. Every sermon should make some one truth prominent, and the style of writing and of elocution should be in harmony with that one truth. The spirit of it should breathe itself forth in the prayers and in the songs of the service; and every service will have a fresh interest because it is unique. An obvious fault of the Catholic worship is, that on almost every Sabbath there appears to be an unvaried routine of prayers and praises. Week after week, month after month, come the same tones, the same gestures; and the feelings of the hearer are not prepared for any peculiar utterance of doctrine. The priest of this Sabbath seems to be clothed in the same robes which were worn by the priest of the last Sabbath, although the two preachers are strangely dissimilar in form; and the doctrine, if there be any, held forth to-day is shrouded in the same formalities which covered up the doctrine held forth yesterday. The material and the spiritual clothing are made to fit everybody and therefore nobody, everything and therefore nothing. At length there rises a longing of the well-trained heart that the same things be not shown to them on the next Sabbath. The instructions of the sanctuary should be appropriate to the hearers, as well as to the theme. In many denominations on the continent of Europe there is a pericope established by ecclesiastical authorities, and the discourses for every Sabbath must be founded on texts selected and prescribed centuries ago as the theme for that day. No peculiarities of the hearers, no casualties, no parochial or domestic joys authorize any deviation from the stereotyped order. Food is given where medicine is needed. But a doctrine has a meaning at one hour which it has not at another hour. It continues to awaken the reverence of men, if it be preached when it has its peculiar force. A word fitly spoken, how good is it. Some musical instruments give only a harsh noise when sounded alone, but in consonance with a full band they redouble its thrilling influence. If he who singeth songs to a heavy heart be as vinegar to nitre, much more does he who utters a truth to minds unprepared for it produce a needless confusion. We may injure the moral, as well as the physical, system by giving to either a stimulant when it demands a sedative. There has been a report, false we believe, yet once common, that Oliver Cromwell consoled himself on his death-bed with the hope that as he had been in his youth regenerated, so he would at last be saved, although he was aware of his having filled up the interval between the earliest and the latest years of his regenerate life with unmitigated selfishness. If this report were true, and if, relying on his old experience, he had been merely assured by his chaplain that all who have been once renewed will be reclaimed from their apostasy before they die, he would have been harmed by the assurance. It would have been truth at the wrong time, which is like food at the wrong time. It would have been one part of a truth separated from the other parts of it, which is like the alcohol separated from the wheat. Dr. Owen or Dr. Bates might have been refreshed by the same thought which would have enfeebled the man who encouraged himself in sin because he trusted in the mercy of God. Multitudes of unfaithful men are reposing a one-sided confidence in the mercy of God, when they ought to reflect on him as a consuming fire. On the other hand there are multitudes who feel the terrors of a slave in view of his justice, when they ought to be soothed by the tones of his grace. When our Saviour was addressing the Pharisees, he did not condemn the open impiety of their Sadduceean enemies, nor in preaching to the Sadducees did he inveigh against pharisaical pomp. But when the Pharisees were before him he spoke of hypocrisy, the sin for which they were noted; and when the Sadducees were before him he proved the resurrection of the dead. In the hearing of the Jews he advocated a comprehensive benevolence, and praised the good Samaritan; for this benevolence was the grace which did not adorn the Jews, and the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. But in the hearing of the Samaritans he defended the Jewish orthodoxy, and said: "Ye worship ye know not what; but we know what we worship; for salvation is of the Jews." It was in this fitting style that he aroused the prejudices of selfish zealots; and they said: "Come, see a man who told me all things that ever I did." His words were like nails fastened in a sure place. His auditors expected from him something apposite, something which they could remember; and even when their wills rebelled against his truth, yet they had involuntary impulses to hear it again and again; for as cold water to a thirsty soul, so is an apt remark, even to the man who is chilled by it. "It is not," says Archdeacon Paley, "the truth of what we are about to offer which alone we ought to consider, but whether the argument itself be likely to correct or to promote the turn or bias of opinion to which we already perceive too strong a tendency. Without this circumspection, we may be found to have imitated the folly of the architect who placed his buttress on the wrong side. The more the column pressed, the more firm was its construction, and the deeper the foundation, the more certainly it hastened the ruin of the fabric."1 1 Works, Vol. v. p. 35. But the services of the sanctuary must be appropriate not only to the theme and to the audience, but also to the preacher; to his character, to his office, to the time when and to the place where, he preaches. It is often difficult to make the preacher's words appropriate both to himself and to some classes of his auditors. His sphere of thought is higher than theirs. In coming down to them he may appear unnatural; but he must come down. When an educated man converses with operatives and mechanics, he talks, if he be a man of sense, not of his subjects, Plato and Homer; but of their subjects, mills and manufactories. So when he preaches, he must leave the plane of his own thoughts and move toward that of his people's thoughts. Our Saviour when on earth did not converse in the words which angels use, but he spoke of planting, fishing, trading, making bread, constructing houses and wine-presses. Hence "the common people heard him gladly," and his disciples requested him to speak again on the same topics. But while in some particulars it is not, in other particulars it is, easy for a man of culture to combine a style befitting himself with a style befitting his people. It is appropriate to him that he speak with authority. Therefore he is to select those themes on which he is supposed to know more than his hearers know. These are the truths revealed in the Bible, with which, if he be a real minister, he is more familiar than laymen are. His themes are duties implied in evangelical truths, and his life is consecrated to the developing and enforcing of what men ought to do in relation to those Christian truths which they ought to believe. Now, the more nearly his words approach to a rehearsal of the divine mandates, so much the more authoritative may be his style. He is to rule over his church, because he is the representative of his Master, and fortifies his own utterances by the plea: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me;" "it is not I that speak, but the Father who speaketh in me." The preacher is to have a sway, but it is to be the sway of the gospel, the sway of |