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The Presentation of single Truths.

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sion to make, "the just shall live by faith;" and no one who has studied those epistles can ever forget this central point to which all parts of them converge. James has a different aim in his Epistle, that of commending an obedient life, and he fills the mind of his reader with the one idea, that faith without works is dead. A man of merely scientific associations, unused to impressive statements, may condemn each of these apostles as making an incomplete representation. But they knew where was the secret of their power. They knew that he who could gain too much at once with the common mind, loses all; that one thing is needful; and when this one is secured, a second and a third will follow in its train.

Among the successors of the apostles, there is no man who has made a deeper impression on the church than Martin Luther. He is in a civil and religious aspect a father to his native land. His memory is still preserved fresh and green among his countrymen as if he had died but the last year. It has been a great query, whence came his power? How was be enabled to disenthral a church from its iron bondage? The answer of some is, that he broke the benumbing spell of the schoolmen and restored the taste for classical learning. The reply of others is, that he combined the chivalry of the knight-errant with the benevolence of a Christian, and that his manly onsets upon the foe awakened the sympathies of high minded men. The solution of one is that he gave a new language to his countrymen and plied them with a vocabulary before unwritten, but yet genial to their

"He grasped," it is said by another, "the iron trumpet of his mother tongue, the good old Saxon from which our own is descended, the language of noble thought and high resolve, and he blew a blast that shook the nations from Rome to the Orkneys." But all these elements of power, vigorous as they are, would have availed but little were it not for a single influence which is overlooked by the world. He held forth and held up high and broad and distinct and bright one stirring truth, "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Morning and evening, from the towers of Erfurt and before the Diet at Worms, from the castle of Wartburg, in the church and in the palaces at Eisleben, and from his still retreat at Wittenberg, it was faith in Christ that he preached and urged home, until he absolved men from their penances, and emptied the confessional and broke down the walls of the monastery. It was this one idea that concentrated upon itself all his energies, and worked with indivisible force upon

him and his hearers and his readers, and at last redeemed the nations. There never was a great object secured without this identical oneness of view, that elicits a simplicity of feeling and a singleness of aim. Whether the evil to be resisted be intemperance or slavery, sabbath-breaking or war, it is the one evil which must for a season engross the mind and loom up as the prominent thing to be dreaded, or men will not be aroused for its extirpation. This is the teaching of history. It is corroborated by the analogies of all the fine arts, by the simplicity of painting and sculpture and architecture. It is to be inferred from the very structure of our own minds.

When we thus insulate a doctrine, and waive for the present some collateral truth which we mean to dilate upon in the future, we must guard against appearing to deny that which we merely defer. Can we not pass over a dogma for a time without nullifying it in the popular apprehension? Of two principles, can we not raise the first into a prominence above the second, without severing the cord which binds the two together, and without hiding the fact that both of them are truths combined? If the range of the human soul were not a contracted one, we might impart a vivid idea of a complicated system without first analyzing it into its constituent members, and without protruding one of them at a time into a bolder relief than the others. But so narrow is the avenue to the heart, that we must often pass our doctrines through it one by one. It is to be remembered, however, that what we should often do, we need not do always. As we may now insist upon this isolated truth, and then upon another, so may we afterwards develop the relation between the two; and this correlation of distinct principles may be itself a single and an impressive subject of a discourse. It is therefore perfectly consistent for me to add as my fourth remark, that a minister, in order to preach with power must frequently exhibit the proper combination of related doctrines. As he should often but not always present them in their insulated beauty, so he should often though not always present them in their reciprocal harmony, their interdependence. We must sometimes collect all the scattered rays of light upon one bright focus. Union, combination is strength. The ancient writers are fond of exhibiting the duality that pervades the universe. "All things," says Ecclesiasticus, "are double one against another."- "Good is set against evil and life against death; so is the godly against the sinner and the sinner against the godly. So look upon all the

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The proper Combination of Truths.

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works of the Most High and there are two and two, one against another."1 "Omnium verum," says Pythagoras, "initia esse bina; ut finitum et infinitum, bonum et malum, vitam et mortem, diem et noctem."2 If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, then heat; if height, depth also; if solid, then fluid; hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, calm and tempest, prosperity and adversity, life and death. In fine, says Harris, "the periods of nature and of human affairs are maintained by a reciprocal succession of contraries."3 As in the human body there are antagonist muscles, one for moving the arm forward, another for moving it backward, one for turning the eye up, another for rolling it down, so in the spirit hope finds its opposite in despair, joy in sorrow, confidence in fear; in short every emotion has its correlate, and one cannot be fully understood apart from its connection with the other. As there is always a correspondence between truth and the soul, we find a duality among doctrines, like that among our mental principles, and one theory must be weighed by its counterpoise. We may alternate from a single member of a duplicate truth to another, but the very idea of this alternation implies that the two members are preserved to alternate from, and that the same eye which temporarily confines itself to one branch of the comprehensive doctrine may afterwards extend itself to the union of the two branches. We may insist to-day on the humanity of Christ alone, and to-morrow on his divinity alone, each for the sake of a vivid impression; but if we permanently separate the two truths, we do injustice to both of them. We then "split the ray of light," as Southey says, in order to see one of the prismatic colors, but we shall never live in the clear day unless we at length unite the rays in the proper compound. Sometimes the doctrine of natural ability may have been down-trodden and our usefulness may demand a special care to raise it up from its obscure hiding place. At other times the doctrine of moral inability may have been overlooked, and we may be required to summon up all our energies in pressing it forward into conspicuous notice. But if we preach unintermittingly and exclusively on free will, our audiences will become too restless for a patient submission to the will of God; and if we dwell disproportionately on human dependence, we shall leave our people waiting to be moved, and rejoicing that they are unable to move

1 Ecclesiasticus, 42: 24 and 33: 14, 15.

See Varro, De Ling. Lat. L. IV, also Arist. Metaph. L. I. c. 5. 'Hermes. Book I. ch. VII.

themselves. The doctrine of human inability is in one respect a kind of centripetal force, which, if it act alone for a long time, will draw truth out of its orbit on one side; the doctrine of human ability has some likeness to a centrifugal power which, if it act without its antagonist, will propel the truth far away on the other side of its orbit; but when the two agencies are combined, the whole truth will hold on in its appropriate path, with more uniform velocity, with a doubled momentum.

A similar remark may be made with regard to other principles. The insignificance of man is an important truth; but if we only convince him that he is nothing and less than nothing, then he will infer that nothing can be expected of him, nothing required; he will lose that regard for his own worth, without which he cannot fully adore his Maker. The dignity of man is another valua⚫ ble truth; but if we only convince him that he was made little lower than the angels, he will debase his original power with a pride which is one of his most humiliating faults, and his self respect will degenerate into vanity. If we teach man nothing more than the entire perverseness of his will, we shall hide from him that vileness of sin which contaminates even the amiable sentiments of his nature. If, again, we teach man nothing more than the innocence of this or that animal or natural emotion, we shall conceal from him the most winning evidences of divine love, that love which gave an only son to die for those who never keep their innocence when they have the power of sinning, and who never put forth a choice but in disobedience to God's law. There is a bone, and there is a muscle in the system of truth; we may have wise reasons for occasionally severing the one from the other, but if we never exhibit the union of the two, we shall disgust men by constantly showing them a skeleton instead of a full body. Truth exerts its whole influence when it is sooner or later set forth as many-sided, as living in all its sides; but if we benumb one limb of it with a paralysis, if we lame any member of it, we make it at last unsightly, unattractive to the view, slow and halting in its movement. For a time, indeed, men will be stimulated by the continuous pressure of a doctrine which they had previously neglected; but after a certain time they will become wearied by it, annoyed by it, driven perhaps into heresy by it; for their sensibilities are never relieved by a view of the symmetry and the grace with which this doctrine is combined into a system. Whatever may be the efficiency of a single appeal aimed at one point, the whole course of our ministrations must affect all points; must

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so group doctrines together as to disclose the exquisite beauty with which they are affiliated. They must be seen to supply and balance one another, or they will not be viewed as a panoply. If one part of them be selected as the exclusive matter of our consideration, then will our ministry be like the car that has lost its wheels from one side, and if it move at all, will grate upon the earth and drag. It will be like the eagle that is shorn of one wing, and flutters and moves round and round in a circle, but never takes its flight to the sun. "As the beauty of truth," says Robert Hall," consists chiefly in the harmony and perfection of its several parts, it is as impossible to display it to advantage" (by never displaying it except) "in fragments, as to give a just idea of a noble and majestic structure by exhibiting a single brick. By detaching particular portions from the system to which it belongs, we break the continuity of truth, we interrupt that vital communication between its respective parts, on which its life and vigor depend, and thus we corrupt the few doctrines which we may happen to possess, and consign others of equal importance to contempt and oblivion."

In the fifth place, the preaching of the Gospel, in order to be powerful, must be free. It is impossible for a minister to exert the highest influence over his fellow-men, unless he utter his own ideas in his own way. "We are all knit together by a strange tie of sympathy," and if we think out and speak out what seems good and true to ourselves, we shall find a response in the mind of others; for as face answereth to face in water, so doth the heart of man to man. Nature will sooner or later interest its beholders, and he who represses the spontaneous outgushings of his soul, only cuts off thereby his communication with his race.

Here and there a preacher puts a constraint upon himself, through fear of being deemed theatrical. He knows that frigidness of expression and of mien characterizes the inhabitants of our cold northern climes, and that a certain stiffness and staidness seem to be in unison with the canons of our pulpit. He dislikes the cramping influence of our provincial habits, and yet he fears that unless he smother a fervid emotion he will be despised for a love of display. He dares not light up his countenance with a kindling sentiment, lest he be rebuked by the chilling gaze of a hearer who mistakes the apathy of our ungenial manners for real nature. But nature is not rigid and straight laced. It is living, moving, glowing, rushing, outpouring. Listlessness in discourse is affectation; stupidity is the artificial vice; and he who restrains. VOL. IV. No. 13.

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