This, moreover, is the inspired method of rebuking error and sin. The "first Christian martyr" never preached a more ef fective sermon than the historical discourse which he delivered when on trial before the Jewish Sanhedrim. Paul, on one occasion, at Antioch in Pisidia, preached a similar sermon, and with such effect, that on "the next Sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the Word of God." Nor was an a wakened curiosity the only result. He "persuaded many of them to continue in the grace of God," notwithstanding the violent persecutions that drove him from the place. Every intelligent pastor might give, year by year, a connected series of discourses on Church History, each series covering some great epoch in the annals of the church, pointing to some distinct form of error, exposing the craftiness, or uninstructed zeal, or fanaticism of some ancient sect of religionists, or the lordliness of some tyrannical old hierarchy of the church. We would not have each successive series protracted so as to weary or disgust, nor mark out specific methods. Our only object has been, to suggest one mode, which may be taken as illustrative of the various modes that will suggest themselves to minds differently constructed, or meet the wishes of men of different, or opposite

tastes.

That a style of pulpit discourses thus diversified, will not augment the duties of the ministry, and call for much of that study which is a weariness of the flesh, is not claimed. Nor is it a valid objection to such an appropriation of the time of the pastor, that the parish is clamorous for more pastoral labor. However urgent may be the plea for "more visiting," there are few congregations that would not regard better and more varied preaching as an excellent substitute for pastoral visits. The weeks would be shortened by the anxiety for the intellectual feasts of the Sabbath, and the intervals between each successive visit would be less carefully noted. It is not so much the superior value of the fire-side instructions, as the wish to cultivate an affectionate interest in the pastor, that calls for an increased frequency in his visits. When this affectionate interest is secured by the greater excellence and happier variety of his pulpit efforts, the same end is gained, and in a way that is both more acceptable and more permanent.

The objection may be felt, by some who are less favored than their brethren, that an incompetent salary deprives them of a library of such extent and diversity, as would afford the requisite aid for a more extended range of topics for the pulpit. The common doctrine of political economy, that the demand regulates the supply, well applies in a case of this kind. There are few parishes whose young men would not feel it a privilege, at the close of every such series of discourses as has been contemplated

in this article, to furnish the requisite means for securing a similar intellectual feast in future. Persons of very good common. sense, sometimes wonder what use the pastor who only preaches "doctrinal discourses," or "revival sermons," can have for many books. The range of topics suggested in this article, thoroughly and elaborately discussed from the pulpit, would solve the ques tion for such preachers, and lead the congregation to supply that of which otherwise they might not see the necessity.

In urging upon the attention of our readers a wide range of topics for pulpit discussion, we are sustained by an argument of no inconsiderable weight. It is an age of great activity in the general diffusion of knowledge. Never before has the press thrown off such a variety of material for interesting the public mind. The period is indeed not wanting in theories, but it is eminently one of facts. Books and periodicals are rendered amusing and instructive by the amount of facts gathered from observation and history. The argumentative style of the seventeenth century, whether for good or evil we will not inquire, has given place to a style of writing everywhere interspersed with, and illustrated by, realities gathered from history and observation. The newspaper press, and the current literature of the day, abound in this kind of material. There is abroad in the community an insatiable appetite for knowledge of this sort. Popular lectures, in all parts of the country, have contributed extensively to promote this state of the public taste. Its exist ence cannot be questioned. In a country where the popular will is law, this condition of society must be met; and so far as it may be done without compromising the character of our sacred things, it must be gratified from the pulpit. The style of preaching adopted by Edwards and Bellamy, while it may meet the wants of the church, and fasten convictions upon the impenitent and lead them to Christ, will not attract our untaught and skeptical youth, and gather them into the house of God, that they may be placed within reach of the Gospel. The state of the popular taste, if it cannot be gratified to some extent by the discussion of topics such as we have described, and is compelled to choose between the sound, discriminating, austere manner of preaching the Gospel which prevailed in the last century, and the flashy, fervent style that abounds in anecdote, will prefer the latter. Anything but a dry manner and a monotonous style, is the language which indicates the spirit of the times. If this state of the popular taste can be gratified, while, at the same time, the great truths of the Gospel are not lost sight of, nor at all thrown into the back-ground; if at the same time that it keeps its hold on the affections of the people, it may be made the great instrument of spreading before them that knowledge of God, which is to be derived from his works, and his providence along

with his word, the pulpit may be made to wield an influence upon the destinies of our country, more powerful, and no less salutary, than in its past history.

But if the pulpit must fall far behind the press, in its contributions to the general intelligence of the people on moral subjects, there will be a strong tendency to fall into comparative disesteem, except among the truly pious.

ARTICLE VIII.

THE IDEA OF HUMANITY IN ITS PROGRESS TO ITS CONSUM

MATION.

By Rev. L. P. HICKOK, D. D., Prof. of Theology, Theo. Sem., Aub urn, N. Y.

HUMAN life is never isolate. It has connexions with that which went before, and will connect itself with that which shall come after; and in the same age reciprocal influences hold all together, and thus human life, in one stream, pours onward from generation to generation. Some force inherent in humanity impels it to action, and some end, towards which its action is tending, must be ultimately reached by it.

It is not steam, nor money, nor majorities, but Ideas, that must rule the race. A good and great idea, put forth in its clearness and comprehensiveness, is more powerful than fleets and armies. Human society has its law of progress, and a true idea of this is necessary to any philosophy which would apply its teachings to human improvement. In this we shall find the secret, silent, but resistless force which urges on the current of social relations, the law by which its action is directed, and the end to which it is tending, and that its working may neither tire nor cease, until it shall attain the consummation it is seeking. The changes and revolutions by which nations are agitated, are so many indices of where and how this perpetual energy beneath is working. The stormy sea is not without its law, through all its chafing waves, and swelling tides, and rushing currents. If we may grasp this grand idea, and make it available as our rule for working upon human nature in its improvement, it can neither be of small importance, nor of limited use to the philosopher, the politician, nor the Christian philanthropist. What we seek to attain, therefore, is, the idea by which we must expound all human progress.

It will be demanded, that we first find what humanity is; then,

that we attain the inner force which impels its movement; and, finally, that we apprehend the law by which its course must be guided to its consummation. We may, in conclusion, make the

application, as our space shall permit.'

sense returns.

Our first inquiry is for the constitution of humanity itself. The animal has its end in the gratification of the Sensory. In this all desires spring, and in the attainment of its object, desire is satisfied, when the animal rests until some new craving of the A sensory may be more or less comprehensive in its susceptibilities of desire for different objects; its sensibility may be more or less refined in reference to the elevation of its objects; and it may be connected with either an instinctive or an intelligent capacity for determining the adaptation of objects to its wants; but none of these things at all change its constitutional kind of being. In the highest perfection of them all, it is still a sensory with its end in its own gratification. Happiness is its only law; and the life, whether it be mortal or immortal, is that of the animal only.

The Rational has its end in the excellency of its own being. Its own intrinsic dignity demands that its action should ever be in accordance with its true worthiness. Hence its impulses are never the promptings of passion, but the Imperative of reason; not what a sensory may crave as a desire, but what a spirit may claim as a duty; not at all what it wants to do as a gratification, but what it ought to do as worthy of itself. It has the knowledge of its true end of action in its own excellency, and thus a conscience: it has capacity to originate action in this causality of its own imperative, and thus a will. Inasmuch as this inherent excellency is perpetual, its imperative must be perpetual; and thus there is a neverceasing causality for action, and an ever-present requisition that the action be directed to its right end. Neither rest nor lawless action may be known by a pure spirit.

This spirituality of being may be infinite in its own excellency, and thus absolute in its imperative, and it is God, evermore acting for his own glory or it may be finite, and merely a creature in its Maker's image; yet as finite spirit, is the same law written inward upon its own being, that it should act worthy of itself, in obedience to the imperative of its own conscience. Where authority imposes an imperative beyond its own inner law, this must stand in a superior rationality; and the obligation to obey reaches the finite spirit, even in this, only through its own conscience. The conviction is immediate, that as finite rationality it can no otherwise act worthy of itself, than that it should implicitly obey the behests of the Absolute Reason.

Such action, evermore in accordance with its own true dignity, fulfils the end of the spiritual. It is not a termination in rest, as in the animal, but a full and even flow in unceasing tranquillity. The satisfying of its own imperative is holiness; and in the attain

ment of this comes the bliss of the spirit. The animal does not seek its object of desire that it may rest; it seeks its object only for the happiness in its own gratification, and rest follows from it. Even so does not the spirit urge obedience to its imperative, that it may find its bliss; it obeys solely for the holiness which satisfies the obligation, and the even flow of blissful tranquillity ensues.

And now man is animal, and the most perfect among animals. He has a sensory the same in kind, though more comprehensive in its objects, and more refined in its susceptibilities, as is possessed by his fellows of the stall, and an understanding judging according to sense, beyond what is merely instinctive, as have also other animals, only that his is more extensive and more conclusive than theirs. Man, thus, has the law of the animal within him, impelling him, through the thousand desires of the sensory, to act for his happiness. But, moreover, man is rational, and possessing within himself all the prerogatives which belong to the world of spiritual beings. The imperatives of this higher excellency of the spiritual become the law written within, and throw their inflexible bonds upon the agency, that it should accord with the dignity of his own rational being, and thus that he be holy. He is not all animal, and thus wholly a brute; he is not all spirit, and thus wholly an angel. Man is spirituality incarnate.

Humanity is thus compounded being. In the sensory, however comprehensive and refined, is the end of the animal only; in the spirit, however degraded and depraved, is still the rational, with the imperatives of its own worthy end pressing their unchanging obligations and human nature is the complex union of the two. Everywhere through the race of mankind, "the law in the members" and the "law of the mind" are rightfully or wrongfully interworking with each other. And these two are all that belong to humanity, as having any end of action, embracing within them every element of the race that can be brought within human consciousness. And precisely in this complexity of humanity are found all the peculiarities which give so much difficulty to the study of human agency, and such wide discrepancy in the interpretation of human responsibility. It is not the sense or the spirit; but through all the tribes and generations of man, it ever must be the sense and the spirit. All philosophy which seeks to subject human nature to science in any direction, must include the elements of the sensory and those of the spirituality, and preserve a careful discrimination between them. Personality may reside wholly in the spirit, and have its right of possession in, and its dominion over, the sense; but humanity is constituted of both.

A second inquiry is for the inner force which impels the social

movement.

If we take the sense, and look into its constitutional being, an irrepressible and tireless energy is at once seen in operation, which THIRD SERIES, VOL. III. NO. 4. 11