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And deeply does it grieve us when we hear the insinuation that there is no power in our ministry, that the modern pulpit is an engine of feeble influence, that there is generally felt a need for something else. We cannot for an instant disestablish preaching from its divine authority. We cannot, upon any supposition, desire for it another theme. Here is fitness and here is force. The office is clear. The theme is divinely great. The want of power can only be charged upon ourselves. And what interest, intentness, intensity, should kindle within us! If we believe, how should we speak! Ours should be tongues of fire! Ours should be words of flame! The subject of our ministry should take such entire possession of us, that zeal and faith and love should be the faintest terms to describe the wrought temperament of our soul. Preaching Christ crucified, in his atonement and its bearing, what power infused itself into those great men who hurled from his high place the Son of Perdition. They grasped none other might than this. It made them strong. It gave them victory. They only plied the secret of far earlier triumphs. It was this which exposed the dreams, silenced the oracles, overturned the altars, of Pagan Greece and Rome with all their gods. Almost within our times, this word of the Cross fanned the sleeping embers of piety, and smote formalism and error with such a blow that they seemed to die. healed. These foes revive.

But the deadly wound, alas, is not The combat must be renewed. We

We must give them battle. There

are summoned to the field. is no sword like this. Instead of distrusting it, we must only put greater confidence in it. We must wield it more resolutely. We must strike with it more skilfully. It must not rest. And if we thus preach, and if all our soul again say, What a word is this! Simple statement, deep feeling, required of us the Holy Ghost will bless his own truth and succeed his own instrumentality.

be in our preaching, men shall Again shall it come in power! earnest appeal, are all that is

And standing where I do, can I forget the origin of this College, or fail to commemorate the honours of its Foundress? How she left all for Christ? How her coronet was laid down before the Cross? How her high-born state was as nothing in her

eyes? How she expended her wealth and last jewellery that the truth of the gospel might be preached? How true she stood to the doctrines of grace? How her energies were devoted to the increase of the Christian ministry? How she bound together all who loved the Saviour, and welcomed them on common grounds? How her venerable age glowed with all the fire of her earlier ardours! How academic learning and training occupied her attention to the last! Here, in these fair domains, we behold the monument of her catholic piety and steadfast evangelism. And you carry out intentions which were broken short. You raise a more elaborate system of instruction. You know that a holy ministry cannot be too learned. You gather on this spot, as your professors, no common men. They need yield to none. Your Faculties are wisely and amply arranged. Your restrictions upon your alumni shackle them to sound doctrine, but to nought beside. Your Institution is daily rising in public esteem. Every auspice gleams around it. Its halls of divinity, literature, and philosophy gather fame. Our Churches, and none more than those of Congregationalism, are your debtors. We bless you out of the house of the Lord!

To You, my beloved Brethren, the Students of this Foundation, suffer me now to offer the assurances of heartfelt esteem and good will. Your privileges are of no common order. There is every means and every motive for high intellectual cultivation. Never can you, after your term of residence here has expired, enjoy the opportunities of storing knowledge which you now command. It is still more important for you to remember, that you are forming habits now which after life is not likely to forego. The indolent student and the diligent minister, the diligent student and the indolent minister, are seldom found in the same person. But my counsels must not be miscellaneous : take one for my charge. Preach Christ crucified! Turn not aside from this under the temptation of meeting some question of the day, or some bearing of the public mind. There is much mystic verbiage which some esteem to be of transcendental depth. There is much pantheism which some regard as original and sublime. Your versatility will often be urged to follow

after these conceits. You will be told of their amazing influence. They really are nothing. They are the bubbles of the hour. They cannot boast even a novelty. I conjure you care little for them. Yours is not a discretionary theme. It is unchanging. Keep to it. Abide by it. It is one, but it is an infinite one! It is the word of Christ, divinely great and true! Its rigidness can never hamper your thought. Its reiteration can never weary your enquiry. At no point can it restrict you. It is a large place. It is a boundless range. It is a mine of wealth. It is a firmament of power. Whither would ye go from it? It is the unwinding of all great principles! It is the expansion of all glorious thoughts! It is the capacity of all blessed emotions! O Calvary, we turn to thee! Our nature,Our nature, a wreck, a chaos, only canst Thou adjust! We have an aching void which only thou canst fill! We have pantings and longings which only thou canst satisfy ! Be thou the strength and charm of our inward life! Be thou the earnestness of our deepest interest! Be thou our inspiration, impulsion, divinity, and all! Our tears never relieved us, until thou taughtest us to weep! only mocked us, until thou badest us rejoice! way of peace, until we found our way to thee! ished from us, until its dove flew downward from thee upon our heart! All was dormant until thou didst stir, all was dull until thou didst excite, us! Our eyes are still lifted to thee as to the hill from which cometh all our help! Our feet shall stand upon thee, O, high mountain, and thou shalt make them beautiful while we publish the glad tidings of "Christ crucified!"

Our smiles We knew no Hope was ban

SERMON XII.

THE PERVERSION OF APOSTOLIC

PREACHING.

GAL. v. 11.

"THEN IS THE OFFENCE OF THE CROSS CEASED."

It is a tremendous threatening which God has denounced against the untoward, against those who obstinately oppose and contumaciously resist him: "If ye walk contrary unto me, I will walk contrary unto you." The issue of such a collision is instantaneous as it is inevitable. "Who would set the briers and thorns against Him in battle? He would go through them, He would burn them together." "Who hath hardened himself against Him and prospered ?" "Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!" And yet the sinner has his counter-plots to the divine purpose, his antagonist movements against the divine agency, furls out his banner of defiance, and would erect his own rebel throne. Vain worm! How easy a prey, how ready a victim, is he to the power he braves, the justice he provokes! He rushes on the bosses of these bucklers but to recoil and perish!

But God oftentimes thwarts and conquers the sinner in benevolence. With the most merciful intentions, he pursues toward him a course of the most unvarying checks and counteractions. He prevents him with goodness. He hides pride from him, but only because pride goeth before destruction. The haughtiness of man He brings low, but simply because grace can only be given to the humble. He hedges up the way, but entirely because he can thus only show the straitened wanderer the path of life. The devices in a man's heart are many, and, let them have their way, that man is undone: but the counsel of the Lord that shall

stand, and it is this counsel, firmly intent upon its grace, which alone can secure salvation. Therefore the language is not more sublime than tender: "He will have mercy: He will abundantly pardon for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than your ways, and his thoughts than your thoughts." Only can we be happy as our natural judgments are reversed, our natural resolves broken,-only safe but as we make an entire retractation of all we thought and hoped, while we "follow after," and "come into," God's righteousness. Our reasonings, our imaginations, are cast down: God alone must be exalted.

These remarks will find their illustration in the connection and history of the Text.

The Apostle had preached throughout the region of Galatia, as he was wont in all places, the doctrine of the Christ crucified. The doctrine was professedly received. They who embraced it were formed into churches. Those churches were constituted in that belief. Neither individual, nor community, disregarded or denied it. It was warmly admired as well as allowed. But it was not truly understood. Its simplicity and sufficience were not properly appreciated. They added to it. They considered the addition as even needful for salvation. It was not to supersede it, but to enforce it. And this appendage was a divine institute, of venerable antiquity, of holy import, of mystic reference to the very truth of justification by faith in Christ's mediatorial merit. It was the seal of the righteousness by faith to Abraham,—it was of the fathers. Circumcision had not been so much annulled as left to a self-abrogation. Paul had himself practised it. Even now, to prevent odium and to avoid offence, he would not have, perhaps, utterly condemned it. But in the present instance it was made essential and fundamental to the gospel. It was attached as a condition, it was contributed as a virtue, to the Cross. Without it, that Cross was denounced to be inadequate to its glorious service. Circumcision was exclusively to render it potent for its majestic design. This external rite was enjoined and boasted that it might complete the Cross, thus implying that it was defective, that it might recommend it, thus presuming that it was

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