has alienated her own children, and, like the god in pagan mythology, sought to devour them.

Infidelity welcomes

those whom

the church repels.

But while the church has been displaying this

centrifugal force within herself, there have risen, on the border-land between her and the world, certain rallying-points for these same discarded philanthropies. There the disowned and ostracised brethren meet, tell the story of their persecutions at home, and form new alliances for the common advantage and safety. Shrewd observers, men of ability and ambition, who are seeking a constituency, and who bear the church no love, here begin to take up the injured cause. These leaders, going too far in their tirades against Christianity, repel the more devout or timid of their new followers, who flee back into the church from what they regard as a half-way house to infidelity. But though returning themselves, they do not bring with them the cause for which they went out. That stays among those with whom they found temporary refuge. Such is the way, briefly told, in which we are often furnished with that strange and monstrous spectacle, the work of the church ostensibly going forward under infidel auspices; Christ's enemies, apparently, saving him from his friends. If the good man had not been asleep, the spoiler had not broken up his house. People look on the outward appearance; and the church has not avoided the appearance of evil, while these unbelievers seem to be carrying out the Saviour's express commands.

The church not innocent.

Thus it is that the infidelity which might have been forestalled, springs forth and thrives. We must confess, in looking over the history of the church, that Christians have many times abandoned their own

arsenals to their foes. Christianity has furnished to infidels the weapons with which they have assailed Christianity. The enemy, watching for occasion against our cause, did not fail to strike when the occasion was given. Identifying the Bible with those who professed to be builded together on it, he could readily make it abhorrent to undiscriminating minds. Did churchmen find arguments in the Bible in favor of systems of injustice? Did they quote its words on the side of slavery, as favoring the indulgence of appetite in strong drinks, against efforts of woman to improve her condition? This was just the opportunity which the wary adversary sought. He took their interpretation of the Book for the Book itself. Their commentary on divine truth was the war-club with which he assailed that truth.

a false posi

We who are Christian believers ought not to should avoid allow ourselves to be thus driven into a false tion. position. It is better to stay in the church, and bear much opposition from our own brethren, than yield up the sword of truth into the hands of the enemy. All real charities are the children of Christianity. Where they are we have a right to be, and ought to be. We may be suspected, avoided, and threatened for a time, by those who make their own traditions the sole criterion of truth, but if we save these charities from falling into infidel hands, if we keep them safely housed, folded within the fold of the Good Shepherd, breathing there a more congenial atmosphere than they can find without,—our reward shall not be always wanting. Then religious error will have no chance to clothe itself in the garments of truth. We shall keep those garments where they belong. Then

infidelity will not be able to steal from us that charm which gives it its power. Then Christianity will not repel, but attract, those who are enlisted in any cause of good will to men. Then it will be seen with a clearness which none can gainsay, will shine forth with a brightness from which infidelity shall flee confounded, that faith in Christ, and the fellowship of his gospel, are the way to all that is loving, or just, or kind between man and man. The church has only to be true to her divine Founder, walking in his own blessed footsteps of beneficence, and occupying all the ground that is hers by the terms of her great commission, and infidelity, shut out upon the bleak and barren rock where it was born, will soon starve or freeze to death.

Duty of the

3. In the third place, those who are called pulpit. to preach the gospel can do much to prevent the growth of religious error, by compelling thoughtful persons to respect them as men of culture and power. I offer this remark partly as a balance to what has just been said. Whatever Christian ministers may do on the plane of common charity, they should strive to perform their especial work with a masterly hand. Hard study and thinking, which, after all, are the true secret of intellectual power, must nerve them daily, or their grasp on the better class of minds will be neither strong nor permanent. If Paul had wished to teach Timothy how to save men from infidelity, he could have written nothing better than the charge, "Let no man despise thee." It should be said, however, that the power of the pulpit, in this respect, does Congrega- not rest altogether with the ministry. Congreco-operate. gations are largely responsible. Not all of them

tions must

will bear, without restiveness, such a style of preaching as would satisfy more thoughtful listeners. Instead of making the preacher feel that he must exert himself to write up to their capacity, they are constantly tempting, and almost dragging him down to a lower level. They pack the house of God with a miscellaneous crowd, who come, not to be instructed, not to grapple with themes which tax the attention and reason, that their moral nature may be profoundly and healthfully aroused, but who must be amused, and superficially excited in such a way as shall incline them to come again. The preacher's office is thus made a kind of advertising agency, in the interest of those who own the pews and pay the parish expenses. He cannot be a growing man, in any worthy sense; nor is he allowed to practise, but must neglect, and gradually forget, those deeper investigations of truth which alone win the respect of the intelligent, and which all men need to have pressed on their attention, whether they think so or not. There should be an atmosphere of intellectual vigor around the minister, which shall not only stimulate. him, but compel the sluggish and ill-disciplined among his hearers to exert their latent powers. Thus alone can the weak be made strong, or the strong who are of the opposite party have any chance to be convinced. On this score, thanks to a faithful ministry and their earnest flocks, we find much to honor in the Puritan pulpit of New England. Wendell Phillips, the distinguished popular orator, once confessed to a friend that Dr. Lyman Beecher taught him how to argue. fidels went to hear Nathaniel Emmons preach,

In

New England pulpit to be commended.

not because they liked his doctrines, but because, in the

handling of them, he showed himself to be a master. Preachers of this stamp were wont to reason till their hearers trembled. Nor were those hearers repelled; but, delighting in sermons which taxed their powers of thought, they were drawn, as by a spell, to the ever fresh displays of intellectual strength. Such preaching made its adversaries ashamed, drew a charmed circle about those who took pleasure in profound thinking and sound logic. They had no inducement to wander off after the teachers of scepticism. Their religious doubts were not a matter on which they set any great value, but, at the best, only secondary. What they craved, and must have, as what alone almost all doubters are ever earnest about, was mental food and quickening. They were not restive, nor was their sceptical bias strengthened. The germs of infidelity in them could not grow, having nothing to feed upon, while they were held by this magic power of argument. Though they came to scoff, not unfrequently they left to pray, being awed into a respect which deepened to godly sorrow, faith, and repentance not to be repented of. A jejune, slipshod style of thinking in the pulpit, weak pulpit. though careless heads like it, and fill the newspapers with praises of it, can never win these higher victories. The same stale thoughts, however variously the changes be rung on them, and though they be set off with an odd text, many scraps of poetry, and humorous allusions, will not go down, Sabbath after Sabbath, with really sensible men. The multitude of those who desire simply to be put on good terms with themselves, may increase; but another class, serious-minded though inclined to doubt, will scatter away into solitude, or where there is some

Effect of a