It is just as natural for a man to frame to himself some theory in explanation of the facts he observes, as it is to take cognizance of the facts. This he will do in religion as well as any where else. There are cravings of his nature, in this respect, that will find satisfaction if possible; and it is not, therefore, a departure from the province of the ministry to regard these cravings and endeavor to satisfy them, or to point out the boundary beyond which reason cannot go, and where the simple, "Thus saith the Lord," unexplained and inexplicable, must give rest to faith. The death of Christ is the great central fact of this world's history, standing out alone-midway between the extremes-awfully sublime in its elevation and in its mystery.

It is apart from the purposes of the gospel to give lessons in philosophy. This fact, and the group of other facts that are inseparable from it, are recorded for a higher purpose. Indeed, God never teaches philosophy directly, yet his works in ten thousand voices teach it. Every leaf and flower and shrub, every pebble and every shell, as well as every planet and every star, have a voice on this subject. There is a true philosophy of spiritual as well as of natural truth. And never can the facts be made to harmonize till that philosophy is discovered and unfolded. Just as in Astronomy, while the philosopher made the earth his centre, the facts of the system were perpetually colliding with his theories, and apparently with one another, so in religious and spiritual truth. The philosopher must first find the true centre of the system, and that centre I am more and more pursuaded is to be found only in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Locate it wherever else he may, he will find himself continually beating up against that impregnable breastwork of facts of which Christ is the chief corner stone. "The conflict of ages" is not yet settled. Nor will it ever find a settlement in speculations that drive us back into regions which consciousness has never known anything about; or worse yet, into the domain of fallen spirits, who were unhappily brought into being before the power of God to govern moral agents was sufficiently developed to keep them from falling! The waves of conflicting opinion will continue to surge on either side, till some mightier central attraction be brought to bear upon them. That attraction, if it be found at all, we are constrained to believe must be found in the deep, unfathomable counsels of Jehovah concerning his Son; through whom it has come to pass that the whole human family since the fall, are not under law but under grace; that the facts to be accounted for, and to be reconciled with our convictions of honor and right, are facts taking place under a redemptive and not a legal system; under a system in which the name of Christ Jesus is exalted above every name, and "where sin hath abounded grace shall much more abound."

But further, where can we find such light, respecting the na

ture of moral government, the nature of sin and guilt, and the condition of the fallen mind, in respect to dependence on the one hand, and capacities and obligations on the other? Where can we find such light on themes like these, as in the fact that such a stupendous sacrifice was offered to make forgiveness possible, and to make it consistent that omnipotent divine agency should be employed to lift up the soul from the paralysis of sin, and bear it on in its conflicts and struggles for a better life-and yet that soul itself be laden with the terrible responsibilities of the issue? How unsatisfactory must be every system of mental philosophy, and especially of the philosophy of the will, which overlooks on the one hand the fact of sin, and that not an individual, isolated fact, but a fact of humanity-a fact that as really links them all together and all to the first man as humanity itself does; or which overlooks, on the other hand, the equally significant fact that the dominion of sin in the soul is overthrown and destroyed by means of the great doctrines of the cross of Christ in the hands of the Holy Ghost. The gospel system is made for man-intended to meet the actual necessities of his condition. The best possible guide, then, to the knowledge of that condition, both in its primal excellence and its present degredation, must be furnished by what God has done to meet its necessities. While we say, then, unhesitatingly that the ministry must not abjure philosophy-their people will not if they do we must add that they may descend into its deepest recesses with perfect safety, if they will consent to be guided by the light of the cross, and not attempt to go beyond it.

IV. Comprehensiveness in adaptations to the immediate neces sities of the ministry.

In this more practical view of the subject, I might speak of its adaptations to develop in the ministry that sturdy intellectual growth, and that earnest, energetic piety which the times specially demand. But I choose to pass these, and speak only of the three following topics: (1) Its adaptation to the peculiar spirit of the age; (2) to the ends of moral reform, and (3) to the special mission of the ministry, viz: the conversion of souls to Christ, and the sanctification of the church.

1. Adaptations to the Spirit of the Age.

That the ministry must in important respects conform itself to the changing spirit of the times is obvious enough. Reverence for the clergy as such, has entirely disappeared from among us, and it is well that it has, never to return. Now if we would move men, we must grapple with them on their own ground, and substantially in the way that other men do. In a high and solemn sense, ministers must be men of the times. We can not wield such armor as our fathers wielded. Those massive piles of

theology in the shape of sermons, built up in solid masonry, with buttresses and pillars, and breastworks, with monstrous porticoes and huge, dark corridors, piled up, too, story upon story, tower upon tower, are noble monuments of the industry and patience of the times. They stand in our libraries to be explored, like old baronial castles, full of the armory of war and the trophies of victory. We sometimes carry away an old battle-axe and re-cast it into a lighter form; but what could we do with those sermons themselves in our modern pulpits? The ministry has been affected as much as it ought in this matter by the spirit of the times, and now it is stoutly maintained that we must take another step our very themes are obsolete. The material itself we use is too heavy. We must take instead the popular topics of the day. We must attract men to the house of God, and keep them there by means of those practical themes in which they are so deeply interested. Is it so? What is the spirit of the age, and what its demands upon the ministry? Look at it as an age of progress. Such it surely is, in many respects of unparalleled and fearful progress. In all that pertains to the development of the physical-in the waking up of the human intellect-in radicalism, political, moral, theological-such an age of progress has never been seen.

What do the exigencies of this progressive period demand at our hands? Not surely additional stimulants-not surely a heavier pressure of the moving force, but guidance, guidance to a safe result; the pressure of a heavy hand upon the helm. At other times, the work of the ministry has been to arouse the torpid and slumbering, to infuse life and energy, and for such a work the doctrines of the cross have been found mighty through God. They waked up the energies of the Wittenberg reformers, and gave to all Europe an impulse onward and upward, not yet expended, and we believe never to be expended, till the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth; an impulse that enters in no trifling measure into the sum of influences which have produced the very state of things in the midst of which we live. Are those doctrines adequate to the new demands which this state of things has created? That elements of progress, belong to the gospel, history has demonstrated. We need not tarry here to explain in what these elements consist. Our great concern now is, to know whether there is power to regulate and guide that progress to an end worthy of man, and well pleasing to God. It is an easy thing to guide while the momentum is yet but small-but who will put his hand to that loaded train, loosened from its fastenings and leaping down yonder inclined plane.

And I confess, that when I look at the work to be done by the church in these exigencies, I am oppressed with its awfulness, its magnitude, its difficulty. When we think of the mighty mass of mind, now awakened to its intensest action; think of the im

measurable power of the press now stimulating that mind to the utmost; think of the intense, absorbing pressure of secular business, tasking to the utmost the physical and mental energies of the nation, sweeping into its current almost the entire ranks of the young men, the hope of the country and the church, and sweeping away upon its bosom the wreck of early hopes, of Christian principles, and of vows to God;-think too, that the end of all this action, toward which all this current is sweeping-the end for which every shuttle flies, and every furnace burns, and every furrow is turned-the end for which every steamer and sail plow the deep, and the iron horse rushes across the land; the end for which the lightning speaks and the press rëechoes its utterances; the end for which cabinets plan and senates legislate, and the whole machinery of government is managed-the end for which diplomacy is conducted, war is declared, and human blood poured out like water-the end is none other than Mammon, the god of this world. When we think that all our boasted progress is but rushing down the steep toward such an end; nothing higher, nothing nobler, nothing better; and when we think that the work of the church is to grasp the helm, and turn the mighty moving mass heavenward, and Godward, the question returns upon us with amazing interest, What are the sources of her power for such an undertaking? It is vain in these circumstances, to appeal to moral precept and the lessons of prudence and economy-vain to point to the beacon lights of past history, vain to trust to national faith and compromises and treaties. All such influences will avail no more than cobwebs across the path of the locomotive. Nothing can avail, till there be a higher end of progress, and this end be so lifted up and magnified in its importance and its authority as to command the eye and interest the heart, and fill the soul of the man and the nation, until everything else is eclipsed by it. What can do this? Not the naked doctrine of immortality; not the thunders of violated law. I turn in despair from these and from every other source of power to the cross of Christ, and bid this maddened world stop and gaze upon that monument of God's wisdom and love-standing alone "amid the lapse of ages and the waste of worlds." From that cross speaks the infinite God to tell what immortality is worth, what is the power of an endless life.

The amazing fact of the death of the Son of God upon the cross lifts up the great end to which all true progress must aim -infinitely above every thing else conceivable and magnifies it, as an interest which, in God's esteem infinitely exceeds all other interests besides. If there is power any where to guide the intense activity of the age, it must be found here. The ministry can be fitted for its work in this age, only where this great truth. shall so possess their souls, so infuse into their very being the spirit and the life of the cross, and give such intensity and en

largement to their apprehension of divine realities, that they shall know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified. The church can be fitted to conflict with the temptations that so heavily press upon her, and to be the light of the world, only by being buried with Christ in baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.

2. Adaptations to the ends of moral reform.

The church as a reforming agent seeks, or should seek, to lay the foundation of an improved state of morals in the man and in the community, deep in sound moral principle; an abiding, permanent change for the better, that will endure temptation, opposition and reproach-to build a house upon the rock that neither wind nor flood can shake. Nothing else in this regard is worth her seeking. To such reform all the tendencies of the gospel conspire. It relies not on external fastenings to a life of decency, but on the renovation of the central power of the soul. It attempts not to dispossess the strong man armed by violence, nor by legislative enactments and judicial authority, but what Chalmers has so expressively termed the expulsive power of a new affection; it makes better states by making better men; and makes better men by making better hearts.

There is no evil under the sun that it is not fitted to grapple with and overcome-no work of the devil that Christ cannot subdue. It comes to men, entrenched in evil habits, wrapped up in prejudice and girt for resistance to all manner of force; it comes in the melting accents of the Son of God, and speaks of the great love wherewith he loved our guilty race; it comes like the midday sun, melting away prejudice, disarming resistance, unloosening all bands, and pouring its own heavenly spirit into the very heart. Faithfully applied and honestly received, the doctrines of the cross must work the cure of every individual and every social wrong which we deplore. It has no magic force to heal diseases to which it is not applied, to remedy evils which it is not permitted to reach; but let it be faithfully brought in contact with any evil system, in the kindness of a heart full of the sympathies of Christ, and a blessed result, under God, is certain. The process may be slow, too slow for this fiery age. Permanent changes in society are always slow, and in the very nature of moral causes must be slow. Changes which involve the reformation of all our tastes and appetites, of all our habits of thought and feeling, and which involve, also, the re-construction of society-changes, too, of this kind, which are expected to be permanent—can not be the work of a day or a year, nor on a large scale, the work of a generation, unless effected by miracle. The eternal verities of the gospel, which must be the foundation of such changes, must not only be correctly taught and apprehended, but their very fibre must be inwrought into the bone and

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