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THE WANT OF PREACHERS.

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for compassion,-insisting that nobody understands them, talking dolefully about uncongenial surroundings, difference of spheres, and all that sentimental whine of constitutions too self-conscious to be satisfied, and too lazy to work -discontented, poetical Byrons, male and female-only with the poetry left out. Not that we feel absolutely hard-hearted at real suffering, or grudging of a Christian pity. But we want a chance to give, sometimes, before the beggar petitions. And when our neighbors inform us, morning, noon, and night, that they are wretched, and then complain that nobody can measure the refinement of their sensibilities, we are irresistibly moved to tell them to go about some honest business. If we would help to give society a free and natural play, we must resolutely refrain from pushing too hard for its special consideration, or exacting too much from its charity; for that always clogs aud compromises the more spontaneous and beautiful impulses.

A deeper disturbance yet creeps into social intercourse through its falsehoods -the radical vice of society as it is of man. Who is the prophet that shall uncover the abysses of acted lies, and pour adequate shame on mutual impositions? Smiles on faces, with envy and jealousy underneath; cordiality in the grasp, with no connecting nerve between the fingers and the heart; invitations issued with a fraud lurking in their politeness, getting the company together by one falsehood-greetings of indiscriminate and extravagant welcome, receiving them with another-fashions made up of composite illusions, ornamenting them with another-ceremonies of elaborate make-believe, sustaining their mockdignity with another; and dishonest regrets at the farewell, dismissing them with another-who will dare to affirm these do not enter appallingly into the staple of what we call civilized and elegant life? When is the rugged, truthspeaking, Christian time coming, which shall tear open and rend apart these guilty illusions, plant the communion of soul with soul on some pure and just foundation, and restore the social world to its primitive and upright simplicity? A great principle of the social science is that each separate soul in the social system be occupied and exalted by great objects of life, and so be a whole and organic creation in itself. Would you study wisely? Fill your mind with those capacious designs which at once give equipoise, and balance, and breadth to character. Would you teach successfully? Teach by what you are more than by what you say. Impress yourself by your own daily heart-beat, and breath, and being, more than by your articulated words. Forgetting self, live in disinterested communion with the sublime spirits of history. Renouncing ambition, bend every energy and hope to unmercenary labor. Climb, by leading forward to the nearest work. Take fortune into your hands by spreading them open to bless your kind.

And if acts are angels, then you can surround yourselves with a heavenly host, right where you stand. Every counting-room can be a Bethel, or house of God; every home a bridal-chamber of purity and peace; every company you enter, an outer court of the church of the Son of Man. Contentment will be your patronage, a good conscience your promotion, the benediction of the Spirit your crown.

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THE WANT OF PREACHERS.-No. I.

HOWEVER mighty the great idol of modern days-the press-is, and it is a great power; however indispensable, needful and efficient in the work of Bible distribution; however effectual the work of the church in all other respectsand this can hardly be estimated-yet all these together can never do away with the necessity for the living preacher of the gospel in the work of God. The preacher is a divine institution, fixed and established by the will of God, and in the necessities of the evangelical work among men. Every effort to ignore the truth, and to do away with this divine institution, is followed as a necessary consequence, by fatal effects on the cause of Christ, whether to the church or to the world. We trust it needs no long elaborate reasoning to convince Christian men of the truth of this. It is only the spiritually idle, the

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THE WANT OF PREACHERS.

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spiritually dead and dying Christians, the carnal or fearfully perverted in doctrine, that are not alive to this truth.

And when we speak of preachers, we desire to speak of men who are devoted to their work; with whom the ministry of the Word is not a sinecure, a very subordinate matter of business, to come in when temporal affairs are all attended to; but the faithful men of whom Paul speaks to Timothy, who feel that a great, precious charge is committed to their hands, for which they will have to give an account to God in the great day. We rejoice that there are noble, godly men, who, though humbly following their daily secular avocations, earnestly labor by every means in their power, and on every occasion afforded them, to make known to saint and sinner the way of life. We thank God for all true men of this class; and they have an ever-present, wide field for usefulness, and in their work may regain to themselves a noble renown. But the class of which we especially speak are those who make the gospel work the one controling business and care of life; who, as far as possible, give themselves wholly to it; and even when they labor otherwise for their daily bread, do so still, only to enable them, as did Paul, "so to preach the gospel." For such cases as the latter may often arise, because of the poverty in some regions of the people of God, or more often because of the worldly-minded selfishness of Christians, that leads them to withhold the temporal support from those who minister to them and to others the spiritual things.

Men will not be called to this work, as were called the ancient prophets and the apostles. We look not for any such special act of God. And yet, God only called such men as were suited, in his judgment, for the purpose; and both in the Old Testament and in the New they were by the divine hand further qualified for his work. The Lord "chose" men by his standard and law of fitness. He did not indiscriminately take men and by his own sovereign act of power, such as he employs in material creation, make them his qualified ministers. By this we would by no means say, that whatever a man is that is good and excellent, is not by the grace of God. We have no reason to believe that the number of men at any time suited to the Lord's work was large; we have many reasons to come to an opposite conclusion. God called Moses because he had been prepared by nature and experience- both God's work-for the great charge; and where he lacked, Aaron was given to him as a help. And God could and would do no more for us now. It would not be in harmony with his ways to take men spiritually and morally unqualified, and make them by miracle worthy ministers of the gospel. The grace of God, in the divine method of his grace, must do this.

Again, men are not to be qualified for this as for the secular callings of men -as the "professions." These are abundantly supplied, not only because of the motives held out, but greatly also because of the easier means of preparing men for them. With certain common qualifications we take men and make them, by certain processes, ready for their calling. With some selection the father devotes one of his sons to husbandry, another to a trade, another to a learned profession; their callings are settled, and they are subjected to a system of preparation. Preachers of the gospel are not made in this easy, off-hand way. We say preachers of the gospel; we know very well that, especially in the old ecclesiastical establishments, where grace is a mere scholastic term and piety a formalism, these having no real, living significance, clergymen are still manufactured, as they have been for centuries past, in this convenient way. But there is a breadth of difference, wide as the distance that separates heaven and earth, between the true man of God" and these professional ecclesiastics. There is no such artificial way of making preachers. Horace says, "the poet is born, not made;" and so we say of the preacher, only we refer to a higher birth—a heavenly. If we could supply the ministry of the gospel as we supply the trades and professions, or as the clergy of the Catholic and Protestant churchand-state establishments are supplied, our task would be easy, even with no better motives than temporal support as an inducement. With such a class of artificial, unsanctified, mere professional preachers, we have nothing to do; they come not within the limits of our enquiry. It is after "men of God" we are

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WALKING IN THE LIGHT.

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seeking-not those professionally so called, but those who are such in deed and in truth. And this being the class of men the work calls for, we can easily see where the real difficulty lies, and how they are to be called forth.

We regret to see that this question of the supply of the ministry is made sometimes chiefly a material question-a question of temporal support. This thing we would not have ignored, but the question is a much higher one. The true man of God feels and rejoices that he does not hold his mission at so slight and unstable a tenure as temporal support. It has with him a higher origin and motive and holds him by far more enduring obligations. Let the lives of God's great men in this work, in the past and in the present, witness. And we appeal in all confidence to every preacher who is honestly and truly conscious of being moved and sustained in his life only by true motives, by such motives as he would be willing to submit to the scrutiny of God, and upon which he is willing to be judged in the great day-whether with him the work of the gospel rests upon any such temporal support? Whether he would feel himself absolved by the neglect of his brethren from preaching the gospel?-we mean not in any special locality, but in the world anywhere, by the roadside, under the green trees, wherever God would give him opportunity. We ask these men whether they depend upon their natural and acquired intellectual endowments for their source of strength and power. We would ask them to tell us, whence was nourished the flame of their devotion, and courage and perseverance, and whence their reward, in the many dark hours of human neglect and abandonment through which they all have passed; when, amid all the human discouragements they resolved not then, and never on earth, to abandon the preaching of the gospel of life to men? Would not their united testimony witness, that the question of the ministry and its supply, is a higher one than that of any artificial or natural qualifications, and of temporal support? Yet these matters just mentioned are not to be overlooked. They have their place and importance. Our aim in all we have said in this connection, is to reach the true point of beginning in solving the question we have under examination. C. L. L.

WALKING IN THE LIGHT.*

WHEN Jesus came into the world, that world sat in darkness. When he began to preach, "the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, and to those who sat in the region of the shadow of death, light sprang up.' He himself was the light, the true light, the light of the world. As his work progressed, light increased; and when his work was done, and from the bloody cross and the gloomy grave he ascended to the heavens, and his apostles preached his gospel to the world, the light shone in all its brilliancy and life-giving power. The light is intelligence from heaven to men, and Jesus brought it down and left it; and for this reason he is called, in a figure, the Light.

Men may have light without the gospel-scientific light, and various kinds of light; but unless they follow Jesus, they live and walk in darkness. They are blind to their true interests. The Israeliites have been blind for the last eighteen hundred years because they have neglected the Lord's Christ. To see God in Christ is to begin to see. Then the mysteries of creation and time begin to be revealed: God in Christ is revealed in all his glorious perfections. Life and immortality, too, are brought to light by him who abolished death by rising to die no more, and ascending to the right hand of the Father. "He that follows me," says Jesus, "shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." To follow Jesus is to walk in a path where the light of heaven shines, where persons can see their every step that it is right. There is no guess-walking where the truth guides: it is a sure, a certain way, where the simple-minded need not err. The light, too, casts its beams far across the valley of the shadow

* Many good pieces from the pen of A. Chatterton have appeared in our pages, but he will write no more. In our Obituary this month his name stands. He has realized his statement-“In the dark valley there is light."—ED.

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of death and reveals what lies beyond. No one who has walked in the light till he approaches the vale of death will ever have any occasion to say, as said the Infidel Hobbes when about to die, "I am taking a fearful leap in the dark;" for he knows for what purpose he has lived and for what purpose he is dying. The light has revealed his destiny. His change is called death, but life and immortality are before him. The light shines and he sees a host of shining ones, a smiling Saviour, and a loving Father, all ready to receive him; for he believes the Word, and the entrance of the Word gives light. A. CHATTERTON.

REVIEWS, NOTES ON PASSING EVENTS, CORRESPONDENCE, &c. THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL: A RECORD OF COMBAT WITH SIN AND LABOR FOR THE LORD. Edited by C. H. SPURGEON. London, Passmore and Alabaster.

MR. SPURGEON has added to his, many labors, those of conducting a monthly. We are not sorry for this. He has large influence, but he is far too prone to content himself with "I say," when the proper word would be "I demonstrate.' In the pulpit he is beyond the reach of those who might instruct him, and his printed sermons reply not to objections, but in his new position some amount of notice must be taken of those who oppose themselves -not that much is to be expected in that line. "Our magazine," says Mr. Spurgeon, "is intended to report the efforts of those churches and associations, which are more or less intimately connected with the Lord's work at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and to advocate those views of doctrine and church order which are most certainly received among us." "We do not pretend to be unsectarian, if by this be meant the absence of all distinctive principles and a desire to please parties of all shades and opinion. We believe, and therefore speak. We speak in love, but not in soft words and trimming sentences. We shall not court controversy, but we shall not shun it when the cause of God demands it." Spurgeon is quite content to defend denominationalism. He says "When Israel sojourned in the wilderness, all the people pitched their tents about

Mr.

the ark of the Lord, and made the holy place their common centre; yet each tribe was distinguished by its own banner, and marched under the conduct of its own chief. Even so in the church of God, our Lord Jesus and the common salvation are the central points about which believers gather, but the standards of peculiar associations of Christians cannot well be dispensed with." But will Mr. Spurgeon in his March number kindly give us a little needed information? Will he tell us into what kinds of "peculiar associations" having "different standards" the church was divided in the Apostolic age? If, however, he say that in that age there were not any such standards and associations will he shew why they are now needed, and will he tell why now, as then, we cannot gather under the one banner that the Lord our God has lifted up?

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Mr. Spurgeon has abandoned the prefix Reverend" which has hereto adorned, or disfigured his name, and in his Magazine he withholds it from all. Quite a number of Baptist ministers are mentioned, but in every instance Mr. not Rev. is used. Surely the small men of the denomination can hardly have face to continue it.

An article upon the statistics of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, containing in teresting figures shall be given upon another page.

THE BAPTIST HAND-BOOK FOR 1865. Published by the Baptist Union.

THIS useful and cheap volume contains the usual information. Another year has gone, and though the Baptist churches in regard to progress were in a pitiful state the year preceding,

E

it leaves them worse still. The "tabular view of the statistics of British Baptist Associations" for 1864 and 1865, stands thus :

Harbinger, Feb. 1, '65.

Well may the Baptist organ say, "It will be generally acknowledged, that neither our Lord's day services, nor such church meetings as are common among us, attain the end we seek."

1. "That the infant children of God's people were acknowledged by a religious ordinance to be within the covenant, and in visible membership with the church of God, for nearly two thousand years before the coming of Christ." ANSWER.-There was no church of God two thousand years before the coming of Christ.

2. "The church into whose membership infants were introduced, by an express command of God, is the same in all essential particulars with the church that now exists."

ANSWER. The foundation of the church that now exists was not laid until its chief corner-stone had been tried, and also rejected of men. The church of Christ had no existence till he had died and risen again.

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3. At the death and resurrection of Christ his church assumed in the world a new form and organization."

SCRIPTURAL BAPTISM-ITS MODE AND SUBJECT, as opposed to the Views of the Anabaptists. By the REV. T. WITHEROW, Maghera, Ireland. THE late Irish Revival resulted in increased searching of the Word of God and that produced, in many instances, conviction that immersion is the only baptism authorised by Christ. The Rev. T. Witherow came to the rescue of sprinkling and published several tracts, replete with arguments long since exploded, and abandoned by all advanced defenders of affusion and infant baptism. These tracts were replete with unfounded assertion, put forth with all the boldness of truth, and therefore calculated to mislead the unlearned. They were brought out in considerable hurry to meet a want which their author considered to exist, and on that ground we were disposed to treat their publication as a somewhat slight offence. But now, after two or three years, Mr. W. has pleased to revise them and to republish in another form the substance thereof, he is certainly highly blameable and ought to do heavy penance for his sin. Were we empowered to pass sentence upon the culprit he would be doomed to stand by the side of a competent opponent before an enlightened audience, for the purpose of defending in public debate the things he has written. Whether he would consider this a sore infliction we know not, but it is quite certain that he would at the termination of the encounter find himself reduced to very small dimensions. Should he conclude otherwise we will do our best, if he so desire, to change his opinion. This notice shall be sent to him and if he certify himself willing to respond through the pages of the B. M. H. his positions shall be examined and equal space placed at his disposal to reply. When the investigation is completed it may be reprinted for distribution in the neighborhood in which he ministers.

As a sample of the author's reasoning take the following-

ANSWER.-If so, it would not follow that because infants were subjects under the old form that, therefore, they occupy the same place under the new. But it is not so-the church of Christ is not an old institution under a new form, but an entirely new institution.

4. "The church-membership of infants has never been set aside.'

ANSWER.-It has never been established. But the "bond-woman and her son" have been cast out, and it is declared that they shall not be heirs with the free.

5. "Infants being thus entitled to memhership by the Divine law, the only question that remains is as to the way in which that membership is to be acknowledged-with baptism or without it?"

ANSWER. -But as there never was a church into which infants were inducted by Divine appointment, both the title to membership and way in which membership shall be acknowledged have to be proved. We invite the Rev." gentleman to the work.

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