undone, but he is working still, working widely, working mightily, and will continue to work as long as the world shall stand. His was pre-eminently a moulding influence, and it was largely exerted upon those whose business it was to be to exert a moulding influence on others. To say nothing of the self-propagating impulses towards all good that may have been set in operation through the peculiar opportunities he had of preaching far and wide, when we consider in how many seminaries besides our own he labored, and at how many different times, and often in contact with large classes of young ministers, there is no extravagance in affirming that he is now giving character continually to the form in which the gospel is presented to thousands upon thousands in every region of the globe. Not only among English-speaking races, but to multitudes upon whom his own most impassioned exhortations would have been spent without effect, he speaks continually through those who have learned from him to speak with power. In Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian, in the tongues of Hindostan and China, and in savage dialects first reduced to writing by his pupils, words that to him would have been unmeaning are every Sabbath and every week day wrought into new and more expressive combinations, and convey the message of salvation with a more commanding energy, because he has lived and taught. The wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke will be transmitted. And it may well be that, long ages hence, the dwellers on the steppes of Asia, as they hear in their own tongues the wonderful works of God, and are moved to holy reverence and trust and love, while all unable

to trace the origin of that inspiration which makes old familiar words to fall upon their ears with such strange power, will have reason, though they know it not, to be thankful for the grace that was poured into the lips of one that sleeps on the banks of the Penobscot.

:

SERMON S.

I.

PREACHING TO THE MASSES.

But we preach Christ crucified.-1 Cor. i. 23.

I PROPOSE, as the subject of this discourse, to speak of the gospel as having power on the masses: in other words, to set forth that type of preaching which is fitted to take effect on the less cultivated minds, the more common minds of the world.

is no longer the

There is great complaint of failure on the part of preachers to reach the mind and heart of the people. There is alleged here a great defect in the result or fruit of their labors; and it is asked if there be not some serious defect in our theory and mode of preaching. Or must we take the ground that the gospel itself is incompetent, power it once was? It is alleged, from a highly authoritative source, that the preachers of this day are at fault in keeping to a refined and intellectual type of discourse, having too prominently in mind an élite and elect class of hearers. I do not undertake to pronounce on the justice of these statements or criticisms, but fall back on the theme already indicated; namely, that type of preaching which we find set forth in the first Christian labors, prominently as exem

plified in the apostle Paul, that most effective of all preachers.

We take for our text his own words, descriptive or suggestive of his own mode. His work was pre-eminently to preach the gospel; and he condenses the whole statement into three words: We preach Christ crucified. This mode, which was his power, is more expansively given in a statement which he makes in 1 Cor. ii. 2: "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. For I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." Again, he says, "I came not to you with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God."

That the apostle's preaching was with great effect, there is abundant evidence. His work, in this regard, the results accomplished by it,-in its radical reforming efficacy; in the number of souls reached and saved; in its influence upon the condition of the age, and the history of the world; in its bearing upon the kingdom of Christ, and the repletion and the blessedness of heaven,-is without any parallel. And it was a work not only vast in compass, but also various and profound in detail. It was a work on the soul itself, changing the man at the very centre and spring of all his action, succeeding, as the apostle did, to make the gospel a power to do this wherever he touched, — showing it a power alike upon those almost at antipodes in locality, and quite so in character; upon the barbarian and the civilized equally;