gregations. But who has done more to make the pulpit respected by a keen-eyed world? Who has done more to prove to this American people, so quick to spy out shams, that religion is the best and truest friend of suffering humanity? In all ages, a vast deal of shoddy has gone to "the cloth;" and he does yeoman's service to the cause of pure religion who shows in the pulpit character that wears like homespun. It is men like this-faithful to the high duty of the prophet, speaking the truth of God to unwilling ears, proving that to put on the preacher is not to put off the man who in this nineteenth century redeem the pulpit from contempt. If, indeed, the world's welfare at all depends upon "Sunday services," it is to men like this that the world most owes the perpetuity of the institution. Because he has been so radical in his public speech, our generation has produced no more powerful conservator of the pulpit than Samuel J. May.

It is quite true that Mr. May has never been, and is not now, what is commonly considered “radical” in theology. But he has always preached his theology as unreservedly as his religion, and that, too, in places where it was the ultima Thule of radicalism. It seems but fair to infer, that, had his theology been quite different from what it is, he would have preached it no less frankly. Boundless faith in the wholesomeness of the truth, whether practical or doctrinal, is the open secret of his pulpit course. If his life teaches any thing, it teaches the equal nobleness and wisdom of bold utterance of all deep convictions. Hence it appears just to point to his preaching as a most apt illustration of that course in the pulpit which we here advocate. If we are wrong in this, we make haste to drop the illustration, but nothing more.

In discussing the "ethics of pulpit instruction," we cannot wholly waive inquiry into the previous question, whether instruction is properly a function of the pulpit at all. We are not sure that all would admit this. Liberal Christianity was, at first, mainly an intellectual re-action against Christian superstition. The force of this re-action is now in great measure spent; and there is in some quarters an evident ten

dency to disparage the intellect, to treat it as an interloper in the Church, and to magnify at its expense the practical and emotional side of human nature. The tremendous power of ideas, their influence both on worship and on work, is forgotten. The views taken of the purpose of the pulpit could not possibly remain unmodified by this tendency. Hence edification the building up of moral character, and the culture of religious sensibility; the practical application of old, familiar truth to heart and life, and not at all the promulgation of new truth-seems to many persons to be the preacher's only legitimate aim. To all such, therefore, the pulpit appears false to its duty, when it undertakes the task of real instruction; instruction, that is, which is more than the simple illustration and enforcement of duties and truths already well known.

With this view of the matter, however, it is hard to see how any liberal minister can agree. It is quite in keeping with the "evangelical" theory of religion: it is quite out of keeping with his. The mere suggestion that the pulpit may have new truth to promulgate, must be to the "evangelical" denominations a direct attack on the sufficiency of the Scriptures, an impious insinuation that the last word of the Holy Ghost is not the Amen at the end of the Apocalypse. But that there is to-day new truth in religion of which men stand in need, is implied in the belief, that revelation is a gradual and never-ending process, rather than an ancient and completed fact. The thoughts of God come to man, one by one, in a deeper and deeper reading of existence. They are born in solitary souls before they grow a part of the life of all. Every great idea has its date, and adds itself to human knowledge as a new truth. In religion, as in all else, bumanity climbs, step by step, to higher levels of experience and thought; and the landscape widens as it climbs. To doubt, therefore, that the law of development covers religion as well as art and science, politics and trade; that the nineteenth century also has its new truths of weighty import in spiritual life, is to lose faith utterly in religious liberalism. Yet, if new truth in religion is indeed dawning upon our

age, where shall it find fitter utterance than in the pulpit? What excuse has the liberal preacher for his vocation, but the duty of speaking to the people his private insights? Surely it is robbing the ministry, not only of its independence, but also of its moral dignity and its chief claim upon the respect of mankind, to prohibit instruction from the pulpit in the highest thought and the best wisdom of the age. If the institution of public preaching has its sole raison d'être in a desire to eternize the ideas of less cultured times; to prop up old forms of worship, which bear no relation to the living spirit of the present; and thus perpetuate a cultus which has become less a help than a hindrance to the most highly developed religious consciousness, it will soon enlist in its support only men of inferior ability and uninfluential character. Commanding power and profound moral earnestness will wear no such fetters. Expect conformity, — and obtain mediocrity. Under such an administration of religious institutions, the rising generation will not be educated in the Church, but out of it. Religious instruction that is abreast of the hour must and will be had; if not from the pulpit, then from general literature. The age is too religious to lend its ears to ordained parrots. It has deep faith in an ever-living and ever-speaking God,—a God that never speaks without saying something; a God that never deals in stale repetitions, but utters a new word to every listening soul; and, by his fine hearing of the "still, small voice," it unerringly distinguishes the prophet from the pulpiteer.

Never was there greater need of pulpit instruction than today; never was there greater craving for spiritual truth, or sincerer hospitality towards it. By his position, the preacher gets the readiest access to human hearts, if only faithful to his opportunity. Men are bewildered and dazzled by the new ideas and magnificent discoveries of the age. In its whirl through space, the world is cutting the orbit of a brilliant army of meteors, that stream across the skies of thought in fiery swarms; and, while its heavens are thus ablaze with distracting lights, it has great need to be instructed by a science worthy of its name, that, of all these flying and flash

ing hosts, God is the one radiant point. The old problems are dropping into oblivion: new problems demand solution. The intellectual activity of the age is intense; and can any one believe, that, while the intellect is thus stirred to its depths, the heart can remain unstirred? The pulpit may adjourn these questions of the intellect, if it will, and seek to move the heart alone; but a surgeon might as well stop a gushing wound with lint, when a severed artery needs to be tied. If the heart-faith of the age is disturbed, the disturbing cause is quite as much in the intellect as in the will. Many a noble nature is distressed by a secret decay of faith in the reality of religion, caused by the influence of modern thought and science in destroying old beliefs. Appeals to the heart, which are based on these very beliefs, only exasperate the disease, and turn earnest questioning into bitter rejection. In almost every congregation there will be many such. When, out of sluggishness, apathy, policy, or fear, the liberal preacher eschews all discussion of living issues, and confines himself to moral platitudes, and soft, little sentimentalities, he lets slip his grandest opportunities, and simply runs a machine.

It is of infinitely less moment, both to him and to his hearers, what truth he sees, than what character he shows. It is far easier for a man of moderate ability, but sturdy sincerity, to hold the attention of the most highly cultivated audience, than it is for a man of genius, without moral courage, to hold the attention of a congregation of mechanics or farmers. It is the manner in which the minister approaches or shuns the exciting questions of the day, that in great measure determines the weight of his word. The people expect outspokenness and candor, —especially those of them who already know the existence of such questions; and they quickly see through the minister who dares not discuss them. The silences of the pulpit are the secret of its lessening power. If frank speech drives away some, timid or politic non-committalism keeps away others. And we venture to believe, that among those thus kept away are many of the ablest and noblest in the community. In the majority of

pulpits, the traditionary ideas, undermined by advancing knowledge, are still quietly taken for granted, or defended without any appreciation of the real issue, or perpetuated not honestly in phraseology, signifying one thing to the speaker, and another thing to the hearer. There is too little frank and earnest instruction in the pulpit of any kind. Whatever his opinions on important points, whether in favor of the old or of the new, the preacher owes them an unreserved and unambiguous expression; and his usefulness, especially to the young, will depend much on this absence of reserve and ambiguity. A young man, for instance, takes up one of our commonest periodicals, and reads Professor Tyndall's essay against "Miracles and Special Providences." If he has been already instructed that religion has nothing to do with miracles, but rests on its own evidence in the spiritual nature of man, no harm ensues; but if he has heard nothing on the subject from the pulpit, and has grown up with the notion that miracles are the great proof of Christianity, it is ten to one that he loses faith in miracles, Christianity, and religion itself, all together. If, on the other hand, he has heard the question of miracles honestly discussed in its modern aspect, and answered in harmony with the received theologies, he is certainly able to form a more val uable opinion on the subject for himself, than if he had heard nothing of the sort. In any case, instruction does good, and the want of it does harm. The thoughtful and the thoughtless alike are confronted with questions affecting profoundly their deepest faith. A single illustration will suffice. In the paper by Sir John Lubbock, on the "Early Condition of Man;" and in the report by Mr. Pengelly, from the Committee on the Exploration of Kent's Cavern, Devonshire, —presented at the annual meeting of the British Association at Dundee, only a few weeks ago, ideas are advanced and facts established which are utterly subversive of Christianity, as popularly understood; and yet these papers, in full or in abstract, have been published in the newspapers throughout the civi lized world. Through countless other channels, the same influences are pouring into the minds of the common people.