had failed, and his mind was almost gone. As I sat by his bed-side, he fixed his eyes earnestly on me for a few moments, and then repeated the following lines:

I long to see the seasons come,

When sinners shall come flocking home.

After repeating these lines, he asked me if some one had not used those words. I answered, 'Yes.' The tears started in his eyes, as he remarked, 'Every thing that does not in some way fall in with the sentiment of these words, is chilling to my spirit, and I cannot endure it.'

"It then seemed to me that I had, in these few words, a fair epitome of Dr. Anderson's life and character."

ARTICLE III.

DISCRIMINATING PREACHING.

THE Church has long realized, in some good degree, the importance of a careful discrimination in the presentation of the great truths and doctrines of Revelation. As the territories of truth and error are contiguous, and as every Christian grace has its counterfeit, we rightfully demand that the minister of Christ should be able, clearly, to apprehend moral distinctions, and plainly to express them. Loose and illogical statements of saving truth, on the part of a professed teacher of religion, no one will countenance. A cloud of vagueness must never rest upon the instructions of the pulpit. One great end that we seek to attain by a careful theological training of our candidates for the ministry, is the capacity of presenting every great doctrine of Revelation in its proper relations, and with strict logical accuracy. Indeed, in the practical forgetfulness of this important principle, both the Arminian and Unitarian heresies in this country are regarded by many as having taken their rise. "At the time of the revival under Whitefield

and Tennent, some of the nominally Calvinistic ministers, destitute themselves of accurate and definite views, gave but defective and cloudy instructions in their preaching. The people consequently soon lost nearly all discriminating knowledge; orthodox terms sounded in their ears, while error was getting lodgment in their minds; until at length, after the writings of Whitby and Taylor had been industriously circulated, Arminianism boldly entered the pulpit. Then the public instructions becoming still more loose, the people were soon ready, without any deep shudder, to hear the denial of Christ's divinity."

But while the Church may thus feel the importance on the part of her ministry of a careful discrimination as to doctrine; it may, we think, be questioned whether sufficient regard is had to the same careful discrimination as to character. If they heed the importance of the inspired declaration, “Hold fast the form of sound words," it admits at least of a query, whether they are equally mindful of the exhortation, "And of some have compassion, making a difference, and others, save with fear, pulling them out of the fire."

The long, and we may almost add, exclusive scholastic training of our ministry, doubtless conduces to this forgetfulness. The well-furnished minister of Christ is, in intellectual stature, necessarily raised above the multitude around him. By the very nature of the case, he moves in a higher region, and breathes a different atmosphere. With them he has indeed many emotions, tastes, habits, ideas, in common, but likewise many others to which they are strangers.

And the more perfect his education the further removed is he. The more entire his mastery of the various intellectual subjects which have come before him, the more delicate his emotions, the richer his imagination, the less necessarily he will have in common. And thus there is danger that the minister will come to be out of sympathy with common men-unwilling if not incapacitated for adapting himself to their varied and peculiar circumstances.

Some of the ancient philosophers and learned men, Greek and Roman, looked with the most perfect contempt on the ignorant multitudes of their countrymen. The vilest epithets

were habitually employed in designating them. If these philosophers had actually been a higher order of beings, they could not have been more arrogant and supercilious. And learning -at least when a Christian spirit does not permeate it-perhaps always leads to this result.

John Foster when at Newcastle-on-Tyne, says in writing to a friend, "I have involuntarily caught a habit, of looking too much on the right-hand side of the meeting. 'Tis on account of about half a-dozen sensible fellows who sit together, and I cannot keep myself from looking at them, and sometimes almost forget that I have any other auditors. They have so many significant looks, pay such a particular and minute attention and so instantaneously catch anything current, that they become a kind of mirror in which the preacher may see himself."

Is it not possible that in these words we may, "as in a mirror," see one grand reason for the remarkable unsuccessfulness of the public discourses of that truly great man-especially when compared with those of his cotemporary and friend, Robert Hall, who in the language of Foster himself, "worked in each sermon his inquiry so close to you as to endanger your being caught and torn by some of the wheels; just as one has felt sometimes when environed by the noise and gigantic movements of a great mill?"

The subject then which we propose to discuss in this Article, is the importance in preaching of discriminating characters-or in other words, of adapting the mode of presenting divine truth to all the diversified manifestations of human nature.

That preaching in its style, form, and principal topics, should to some extent be influenced by the peculiar character of the age, no one will question. Thus, in the primitive ages of Christianity, the divine mission of Jesus Christ; the proofs of his Messiahship, drawn from the prophetical Scriptures; and justification through faith in Him alone as an atoning sacrifice, were themes which the condition of the Jews and of the heathen world made particularly apposite. Upon these it was peculiarly fitting that the apostles and early propagators of our faith should frequently speak. And so at the Reformation, justification by faith alone was the doctrine, which more than any other

needed to be explained and enforced by the immortal champions of religious emancipation. Thus, too, in the days of Cromwell and the Covenanters, the strong existing tendency to fanaticism demanded a very different course of preaching, from that which was required in the licentious reign of Charles the Second. As new errors spring up, or old ones are revived under more specious names and forms, as the enemy changes his mode of attack, and the Church verges to one extreme or another, a peculiar prominence should be given to those great truths of the Bible which are adapted to the exigencies of the times.

But if the character of the age thus modifies the style, form and principal topics of pulpit discourse, the same is true of the particular audience, that a minister may be called to address. General positions and comprehensive views may indeed be just and pleasing, but in order to the highest utility of preaching, regard must be had to the species and individual. The mirror of truth must be patiently and firmly held up before every man, and with gentleness and affection we must say :-" Mortal, behold thyself." As a single color of the painter indiscriminately spread over canvas, may be very proper for certain purposes, but no one mistakes such a painting for the likeness of a human being; so the sermon that consists of generalities without any exact delineation of character, awakens no vivid interest, and leads no hearer to say, "that means me."

But to illustrate more fully the importance in preaching of discriminating characters, several distinct considerations should be presented, and to this end observe the real diversity that exists in the mental and moral condition of those to whom the minister is called to present divine truth. In one sense, human nature is everywhere and in all ages of the world essentially the same. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." From various causes, however, it is equally obvious, that there is in the character of men, as in their physical appearance, a great variety. Difference of age, education, social position, and natural temperament, create in every congregation great diversity, both of mental and moral conditions. In the sanctuary, the rich and poor, the learned and ignorant, the parent and child, the naturally amiable and sweettempered and those whose dispositions are directly the opposite, meet.

That sweeping generalization of men into saints

and sinners, so common in pulpit discourse, is not sufficiently discriminating. Men do not readily classify themselves under either of these general divisions. Indeed they are both susceptible of an almost endless subdivision. Among professing Christians are the lukewarm, the backsliding, the presumptuous, the desponding, the self-deceived, the hypocrite; and among the impenitent, are the thoughtless, the hardened, the proud, the dissolute, the sober, the serious. There is not a single phase of human nature with which the minister is not brought in contact. He is required to act upon mind in every condition of temper, susceptibility, and tendency. He sees it in all its Protean forms. He is not like a professor in his chair, surrounded by a class of minds equally able by early training to appreciate the truth that he may utter, and generally homogenous, but rather like an advocate at the bar, or a politician in seeking place. And hence the necessity of the minister, with the advocate and politician, of placing himself as much as possible in the circumstances of those whom he addresses; of taking into account how they have been educated; making allowance for their prejudices; entering into all the feelings peculiar to their age, and station in society, and adapting his mode of approach to their peculiarities. As one class of persons can be won to embrace religion by mild and gentle persuasion, and another can be aroused only by the terrors of the law; as one man before he will embrace Christianity needs his intellect to be convinced, and another his heart to be moved; as "the milk of the word" is the proper aliment for babes, while the strong meat of the Gospel belongs to them. that are of full age-so it is of the greatest moment that the minister of Christ should, by "rightly dividing the word of God, give to each his portion in due season." "The soul of man is like a complicated instrument, which becomes vocal in praise of its Maker when it is plied with varying powers; now with a gradual, and then with a sudden contact; here with a delicate stroke, and there with a hard assault; but when the rough blow comes where should have been the gentle touch, the equipoise of its parts is destroyed, and the harp of thousand strings all meant for harmony, wounds the ear with a harsh and grating sound."*

*Bibliothéca Sacra. Vol. vii., page 555.