washed away in the blood of Christ, who will not say with a thankful, though a fearful heart, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief 1?

1 Mark ix. 24.

SERMON XVII.

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

HEB. xiii. 17.

Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account.

FEW persons, perhaps, who are called upon in this place to fill the office of a preacher, have not sometimes felt a difficulty in choosing the subject of their discourse. The parochial minister, though required much more frequently to address his congregation, is partly for that very reason, and partly from his more familiar intercourse with his hearers, less likely to be at a loss for topics of instruction. He knows the spiritual wants and the mental capacities of his flock; he not only sows the seed, but he watches it ripening for the harvest; and he naturally selects those subjects which he considers most likely to edify his hearers. The preacher in this place is in some respects differently circumstanced. His first discourse is sometimes also his last; and he prepares it with the conviction, that such will be the case. Or if he be appointed to preach more frequently, though he may then carry

on his subject through different sermons, yet they are delivered at considerable intervals; his audience fluctuates and varies; and what is perhaps the most serious inconvenience, he knows little of the spiritual state of his hearers, and is not called upon to instruct them beyond the short time that he addresses them from the pulpit.

I may be excused for stating, that these thoughts pressed forcibly upon my mind, when I found myself called for the first time to discharge that part of my duties which is connected with public preaching. Upon other occasions, and in a different capacity, I have attempted to fulfil this office: the undertaking was voluntary; and the preacher, as I observed before, when his sermon is ended, can only feel that his connection with his congregation is ended also. But I say it with a feeling of no small responsibility-I cannot now get rid of the conviction, that the science of theology, as it is professed in this place, is necessarily connected with preaching the word of God. I have spoken purposely and advisedly of the science of theology: and if I may be allowed again to notice what has passed in my own mind, I could say much of the fears which I have entertained, lest theology is considered among us too much as a science. It is treated, I fear, as something which may amuse the ear, or exercise the head, but not as that which is to amend the heart and save the soul.

Far be it from me, in this place, or in any place, to say a word against critical or even controversial theology. Though the pages of ecclesiastical his

tory may make us blush for our fellow Christians, and though we may grieve over the bitterness of polemical warfare, yet there are times when the soldier of Christ must gird on his armour; when he is called upon in the name of truth-in the name of his Saviour and Redeemer-to step forth, if it be only with a sling and with a stone, to repel the uncircumcised Philistine, who would defy the armies of the living God. Controversy, if carried on in the spirit of Christian charity, with a view not to contract the walls of our Zion, but to repel those who would level them with the ground, may have the effect of confirming the faith, and removing the doubts of many who, without such assistance, might long have wandered in error, and might finally have been lost. Until the time is come that truth shall finally prevail, and that believers are again of one heart and of one soul, there must be differences of opinion, and open or secret attacks will be made upon the Gospel. To repel these attacks, it is necessary that the soldier of Christ should know well the adversary whom he is to encounter, and the weapons which he is to wield: nor will he repent, when the day of battle is arrived, that his thoughts were turned in this place to examine the foundations of his faith, and that not merely the practice but the doctrines of religion were sometimes explained to him from the pulpit. It is the peculiar province, I may say it is the peculiar duty, of persons in this place, to unfold the mysteries of revelation, which in the earlier stages of education are better left unnoticed. The young man has

heard from his parents the fundamentals of his faith; he has heard the moral precepts of the Gospel from his parochial minister; and we shall not surely condemn the system which leads him in this place to listen occasionally to the abstruser branches of theology. Can we forget those great and venerable names, whose labours have associated this seat of learning with all that is sound in doctrine and pious in devotion? Who, though dead, yet speak in the works which they have left behind; and who rest, some of them, within these very walls, as if to animate by their example the zeal of the preacher, and to raise in the hearer a thirst for Christian learning.

Neither would I say that critical disquisitions upon passages of Scripture are unfit subjects for academical discourses. We may say what we please of practical religion, but unless a man will study for himself the word of God, unless he will draw from the fountain of living waters, the truths which he hears, and which affect him at the time, have little chance of sinking into his heart, or influencing his life. It is the solemn duty of teachers in this place to enforce a knowledge of the Scriptures. It is a blessing for which we cannot be too thankful, that the New Testament at least is laid open to all in the language of its inspired composers and if there are difficulties in that book which have exercised the most acute, and baffled the most profound enquirers; which seem purposely placed there that every succeeding age, and every individual Christian, may have a chance of