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and aroused to emulation, by the conduct of the mass of professed followers of Christ? We cannot regard the seemingly feeble results of the divine spirit in our day, as any proof that its aid is not to be expected. Let Christians pray more earnestly that God will pour it out on them, and sanctify their hearts; let them strive to illustrate in their lives the hallowing power of Christian truth; and they may hope that God's mighty mercy will be brought to bear on their neighbors and fellow-men. The spirit of purity will brood over souls that seem steeped in vileness, and they will hunger for knowledge and virtue. For it is no idle prophecy which the Morasthite seer uttered, "But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of Jehovah shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow to it. And many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths."

This prophecy will be fulfilled with emphasis, whenever Christians are sufficiently imbued with the spirit of their Master, to teach their brethren by word and life the excellence of Christianity.

M. G.

ART. IX.

Relations of the Ministry to Society.

AMONG the changes of public sentiment which are obvious in the history both of our country and of our age, we are sorry to recognize a tendency to undervalue the position and importance of the Christian ministry. This tendency is one of the infinitely varied expressions of that revolutionary and disorganizing element, which has become so rampant in our time. Radically, we regard it as the product of faithless and irreligious men,

and we hold that its presence in our civilization is indicative of a large measure of skeptical and materialistic grossness. Nevertheless, as it often appears in alliance with philanthropy, and assumes the most generous motives, it is liable to secure the indirect influence of a noble order of minds, and thus to diffuse itself by a sanction to which it has no real claim. On this account, rather than from any apprehension of its inherent force, are we induced to offer the ensuing considerations.

Before proceeding, however, to the main purpose of the essay, it may be well to call attention to the attempts of certain reformers to array the interests of benevolence against Christian usages and institutions. It is contended that the church has become recreant to the best interests of humanity; that it harbors aud perpetuates the spirit of mediæval subjection; that it manacles thought and fosters spiritual tyranny; that it opposes the advancing light of improvement, and embarrasses the ascending march of science; that it lends its authority and its terrors to the cause of oppression, and sanctions those social abuses which all true men are striving to abolish. The ministry is charged with being the depository of obsolete ideas, the organ of proscriptive aims, of local policies, and selfish interests. The profession is stigmatized as an association of time-servers, of crafty seekers of power, or indolent lovers of pleasure; contemplating their pri vate emolument, rather than the public good, varying their policy with the changing aspects of events, governed by expediency, not directed by principle. Arraigned on these serious charges, the church and the ministry, little or no defence being admitted, are adjudged to be rubbish, which that potent, but indefinable thing, called the Spirit of the Age, will consign to the contempt of a wiser generation!

Now we insist that this sentence is utterly unjustified in view of the whole mass of evidence, pro and con, and that it will not be confirmed by the supreme court. It is a contradiction of fact to affirm that the Christian church and ministry are barriers to the real progress of the world, or enemies to the rights of mankind. Not that certain departments of the church, and certain schools of its ministry, are not liable to such an imputation. There

are sections of the church unspeakably corrupt, apparently destitute of both the truth and humanity of Christ; the ministry, gain-seeking, worldly, and ignorant. There are other divisions of the church, which, viewed as expressions of, absolute attainment in Christian knowledge and virtue, might justly be considered as impediments to progress; but which, beheld as the transient signs of religious developements, ever changing in their manifestations, and as the appropriate forms of certain stages of culture and experience, are to be justified and approved. Comprehending the character and action of the church in the aggregate, tracing the influence of its ministry in its historical and geographical relations, and reflecting that it is not an inflexible form, like the Iron Bed of Procrustes, but a fluent institution, taking shapes consistent with its varying conditions, and uttering truths as they become matured in the souls of its members, we are confident that it will stand approved, in the ultimate judgement of the world, as the grand instrument of freedom, of education, and reform.

Before it can be fairly assumed that the church is antagonistic to the welfare of the race, it must be shown that its purpose is, somewhere, completed, (otherwise we lack many facts essential to the estimate ;) or, at least, that the church has not contributed any sterling champions to fight the battles of God in behalf of the poor, the ignorant, and the oppressed. On no other conditions can the charges of the anti-church reformers be maintained. Their accusations rest on the shallowest assumptions, and are pressed in what seems to be a wilful indifference to the opposing lines of evidence. For so long as history and observation present us with many of the most earnest and efficient philanthropists the world has known, identified with the church, and laboring by her authority and blessing, ought we not to trust that the vital spirit of growth and of redemption, which it received of old from sainted tongues and flowing hearts, yet survives in some, or in all, of its multiform associations, and is being developed by processes which human sagacity cannot trace? And while the significant fact remains visible, that those who have attempted the improvement of society, independent of Christian sanctions, have mournfully failed in their

endeavors, are we not justified in distrusting the wisdom of those, who would overthrow our religious institutions, because they have not acted agreeably to their ideas, and then project from their ruins an experimental crusade against the oppressions of the time? Nature permits transition, but not destruction; and developement is the order of Providence, but anarchy has not been, since chaos retired before the Lord.

Pursuing one branch of the thought here suggested, we now propose to present a few considerations on the relations of the Christian ministry to society; in which we hope to render somewhat apparent the beneficent action of this ministry in promoting the social and religious improvement of mankind.

I. The history of Christianity is the defence of the ministry. With the establishment of the gospel, and its diffusion through the world, the ministry is identified. As the divinely-appointed instrument of Christian truth, it is associated with its early struggles, with its persecutions, with its progress, with its corruptions, transitions, and triumphs. It is intimately connected with that series of conquests, which have wrested from Paganism its mightiest provinces; with those social changes, that have so essentially modified the ancient relations of the race, and humanized the terms of its intercourse; with that moral renovation, which is evidently transmuting the barbarous sentiments, and abolishing the cruel institutions, that have descended to us from ruder ages; with the prevalence, in fine, of all those vital and comprehensive ideas, which form the distinction and glory of modern civilization.

Whatever honors are due Christianity for the more hopeful aspect and more benign temper which she has introduced into the life of man, must be shared, in a certain degree, with her ministry. We cannot separate any such voluntary and conscious instrumentality from the cause proposed, or the results realized. The apostles, who willingly entered upon a course which they perceived to be hedged with persecution, and closed by martyrdom, and the ministers of later times, who firmly withstood the seductions of worldly ease and honor, and refused the offers of fame and power, devoting themselves to obscure labors and painful self-discipline,-though the grace of

God and the love of Christ alone could have constrained them to such self-renunciation, are nevertheless most honorably associated, in all minds, with the extension of the Christian kingdom; and to them, under our God and Saviour, is the gratitude of the world due, for whatever is most precious in its attainments and experience.

It will have been perceived that our present argument is addressed to those who recognize the beneficent influence which Christianity has wrought. Those who deny our premise-who find nothing better in Christian, than in pagan, civilization, or who attribute to the principle of progress, those results which we consider essentially Christian,-those who conceive the gospel enterprise as a transcendent imposition, or as a stupendous failure, are quite beyond the reach, it is probable, of any argument contemplated by this article. We have a right, however, to seck a remoter and higher point of observation, and to avail ourselves of a wider class of evidence. We claim, therefore, that

II. The nature and tendencies of humanity, as exemplified in universal history and experience, assert the necessity of the ministry, and demonstrate the vitality of its relations. The general susceptibility of the human mind to religious emotions, is declared by all philosophers to evince an absolute interest in spiritual concerns. It is regarded as an indirect confession of accountability to an unseen Power, and of connexion with an unexplored sphere of being. Now this consciousness of spiritual affinities, dim as it seems in the mass of minds, exerts an extraordinary influence. Penetrating the nature of man, through his infinitely diversified circumstances, it determines the moral attitude of the race. It makes an indelible impression on the public opinion, the usages, the manners, of every people. A consciousness so profound and potent, necessarily seeks some reliable and uniform medium of utterance. It spontaneously erects an institution, embodying its impalpable spirit, and visibly connecting itself with the overshadowing divinity. The priesthood, primarily, was the creation of man's spiritual consciousness, his visible effort toward communion with the Infinite; and we maintain that the order of the Christian ministry, though apparently formed and perpet

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