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fixes God himself from his true place in the centre, and puts man there instead. The other mischiefs of the wrong definition are such as naturally follow this mistake. If you aim at "reconstructed manhood" in your preaching, your aim admits the use of such means for its own accomplishment, as you may yourself account the best. There is nothing in your aim, thus stated, to determine your method. Socrates aimed at "reconstructed manhood." There is nothing fixed or limited, and nothing, therefore, fixing or limiting, in such an aim. It is too accommodating. It leaves the man that holds it lax. It tends naturally to such looseness of statement, such license of interpretation, as, for instance, is exhibited in the following sentence, which I give exactly as it stands in Mr. Beecher's printed "Yale Lectures on Preaching" "If you will look through the New Testament," Mr. Beecher says, "with your eye on that point, you will find that Paul -the greatest of all preachers, I take it-aimed all the way through, and certainly Peter, in his famous sermon on the day of Pentecost, aimed, at reconstructed manhood."

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Mr. Beecher here makes his appeal with confidence to Peter's Pentecostal sermon, for confirmation of his own idea of preaching. Peter, "certainly," he says, aimed in that sermon at reconstructed manhood." Now the fact is, that Peter began his sermon by accounting for the occurrences of the day as a fulfilment of Joel's prophecy. He then proceeded to show that a certain Psalm of David referred to Christ, and thus that Jesus was Christ. He finally closed with a definite statement of his own aim, in these words: "Therefore, letall the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." Where does "reconstructed manhood" appear in this sermon as Peter's aim? 'Certainly" (we may use Mr. Beecher's own word), "certainly," nowhere. Peter's sermon contains not the shadow of a hint that such a notion as "reconstructed manhood" ever entered his head. Mr. Beecher read it into the text out of his own fancy; and I say that just such unwarranted treatment of Scripture is the proper corollary of Mr. Beecher's definition of the aim of preaching. Mr. Beecher had made up his mind that "reconstructed manhood was the thing to aim at in preaching, and as Peter was unquestionably a preacher, of course Peter aimed at that. This seems to be the whole of the matter. The fault involved is easy to name. Mr. Beecher's idea of preaching does not imply submission, on the part of the preacher, to authority, and it does not require submission to authority on the part of hearers, as a thing to be aimed at in preaching.

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Now, the very gist of Peter's sermon is a challenge to submission. The whole sermon is one proclamation and proof of the lordship of Christ. The aim of the preacher declares itself unmistakably in the words with which the sermon closes. The absolute lordship of Christ,

the duty of men to acknowledge Christ's lordship-in one word, obedience to Christ as Lord-this at length is the true ultimate aim and object of all preaching. Here we reach the sole safe conception of what preaching should be. Obedience to Christ expresses it all. Obedience in a twofold sense: the obedience which consists in accepting Christ for once and for ever as the supreme lord of the soul, and then, further, the obedience which consists in observing His commandments. "Reconstructed manhood" will be the inevitable result of such obedience, and "reconstructed manhood" will be all the more certainly realized for not being consciously aimed at.

I am profoundly convinced that, to conceive thus of preaching as a means of making men obey Christ in the twofold way of which I have spoken, would, if the conception were intelligently and heartily embraced by preachers, increase at once fourfold the present volume of pulpit power. In the first place, it would supply to preachers themselves what they urgently need, an anchor to hold them to the truth of the Gospel. If there is any one thing more needed at this moment by our preachers than the habit of absolutely unquestioning submission to the authority of Christ, then I do not know what that thing more needed is. There is not a single mischievous tendency of the times in religion that would not be corrected by this habit of submission to authority. We are constantly tempted to speculate, to philosophizein short, to rationalize. We cannot believe in the atonement until we have explained the atonement. We cannot trust the efficacy of prayer until we have explored the method of the divine administration; until by searching we have found out God. This is all wrong. We, in this way, cut the sinews of our pulpit power. We had much better stop short at the first limit, since we can never reach the last. Brethren, we have got to believe more bravely. In order to do this, we must obey more humbly. Above all things else, Christ is our Lord. There is nothing wiser for us than to believe this. We must bow down to Him in our inmost hearts. The authority of Christ should be the end to us of speculation. Oh, the vast, the incalculable mistake that we make in permitting the subtleties of philosophy, the audacities of science, to interfere with our obedience to Christ! For my own part, I am not naturally very credulous. I disbelieve very easily. My first impulse is to question. For this reason, I doubt everywhere else; but I believe, and I bow, and I obey, before my Lord, Christ. Nothing is

so certain to me as what He has said. Is not One our Master? Or are we to divide our allegiance? I tell you, my brethren, we need, first of all things, ourselves to admit Christ into our own minds and our hearts and our lives as absolute Lord. We can then oppose and overawe the confidence of philosophy and of science with a mightier confidence than theirs. And we need to go forth with the sense of heraldship in our hearts, and summon men, in the name of our King and

theirs, to instant and unconditional submission. This will give to our preaching a definite and an inspiring aim. We shall constantly be animated with a conscious purpose. Whenever we stand before our fellow-men, we shall know why we are there. We shall be there to bring them into obedience, or into better obedience, to Christ. Every sermon will be an assault on the wills of our hearers. The warfare will be a warfare of offense and aggression. We shall always be moving immediately on the enemy's works.

If there is to be yet anywhere a falling away from Christ, it will not, I am sure, be among those preachers who accept it for the one aim of their preaching to get Christ obeyed. One anchor can hold us, whatever winds, or tides, or tempests beat. Simple, humble, steadfast, childlike obedience to Christ-that is a bond which never yet was broken. It is our safety, and the safety of the world.

VI.-DR. PUSEY'S COMMENTARIES.

BY HOWARD CROSBY, D.D., NEW YORK.

DR. PUSEY, forty years ago, gave name to the Oxford movement toward medievalism, which landed Faber and Newman in the Romish Church. Whatever may be justly said of the folly of that movement, it was a reaction from gross secularism in the Church of England, and the leading spirits in it were men of devoted piety. The fundamental error of the movement was its trust in the Church rather than in the Scriptures as the representative of the mind of God. Dr. Pusey never left the Church of England. He instinctively drew back from Romanism, however logical it might have been for him to go with Faber and Newman. Their departure to Rome rendered him more cautious, and the latter part of his life was spent in using his learning and influence to promote spiritual religion in the Church of his fathers. In vain will you look for any mediævalism in his incomparable Commentaries. They are the outspeakings of a warm Christian heart, and marked by the thoroughness and careful exactness of a man of remarkable learning.

His "Daniel" is far beyond any other commentary ever written on that prophet. It is an exhaustive treatise on the entire archæology, chronology, authenticity and signification of that conspicuous prophetic book. In this treatise, every argument put forth by rationalists to destroy the force of the book by bringing down its date to the Maccabean period, is met with irresistible counter-argument and with a knowledge of every authority and every resource of proof, so that Pusey's work is the abundant reservoir from which every writer now draws, and is really the end of controversy on the subject.

In the "Minor Prophets" Dr. Pusey has shown the same careful,

scholarly treatment and the same devout spirit. This work is rich in spiritual thought, and must prove abundantly suggestive to every thoughtful reader. Of course, the school which would eliminate the supernatural from Scripture will not like Pusey. Those who would charge our Lord with folly for speaking of Jonah as in the whale's belly, will also charge Pusey with folly for believing that Jonah was in the whale's belly. The modern wiseacres, who can rebuke Moses and correct Isaiah, and sneer at Paul, and talk about our Lord's ignorant teaching, will honor Pusey with their sublime contempt; but the heart that reverences God's holy Word will find in Pusey a most congenial and trustworthy helper in understanding that Word and appropriating its life-giving lessons. That every word of Dr. Pusey is correct, that his interpretation of a prophetic symbol is necessarily right, no one would maintain. Were he now alive he would be the first to disclaim all dogmatism in the matter. His learning was always held modestly, though manfully. He never uses a presuming style, while he shows his own steadfastness of belief.

His Commentaries are of a rare order in mingling the resuits of the highest scholarship with the unction of the deepest spirituality. Most of our modern critical commentators avoid a practical thought, as if it had no relation to their work: but Pusey does not consider his work done until he has touched the soul through the enlightened intelligence. On the other hand, where we have practical commentaries, they are too often disfigured by gross inaccuracies of interpretation, by a lack of general learning, and by a want of discrimination in the use of authorities. But in Pusey we have, with the aids to devotion and righteousness, the guidance of a superior scholar, who makes no blunders, is master of the Hebrew original and its cognate dialects, and who uses copiously and with effect the best ancient authorities, according to their proper application.

To put such commentaries as Pusey's "Daniel" and the "Minor Prophets" before the public is to help the cause of truth and sound learning in a very efficient way. The minister, the divinity student, the Sunday-school teacher, and the thoughtful Christian, will find no aid to Scripture-reading more acceptable or more helpful than these works of him whose beautiful life has received the admiration and respect of those who most widely differed from him in views of Church government and ritual. In these days of crude theorizing and profane handling of God's holy Word, it is refreshing to turn to this godly scholar and listen to his words of wisdom, and bow with him in reverence before the sacred oracles.

VII.-LEAVES FROM A PREACHER'S NOTE-BOOK.

NO. II.

BY ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D., PHILADELPHIA.

X. True Eloquence is a Virtue: So says Theremin, the master of rhetoric. Power in speech in its highest exercise implies a man behind it. Only moral worth can impart the dynamic force that is most immense and intense in oratory. Buffon finely remarks to those who affect to despise the culture of a pure style, "Le style, c'est l'homme!"

XI. Wonderful organic unity exists in nature! Cuvier's Law: "Every organized being forms a whole-a complete system-all the parts of which mutually correspond. None of these parts can change without the others changing also; consequently, each taken separately indicates and gives all the others." The sharppointed tooth of a lion requires a strong jaw, a skull fitted for the attachment of powerful muscles, both for moving the jaw and raising the head; a broad, welldeveloped shoulder-blade; an arrangement of the bones of the leg which admits of the leg being rotated and turned upward, as a seizing and tearing instrument, and a paw armed with strong claws. Hence, from a single tooth Cuvier could construct a model of an extinct species of animal.

XII. The Book of Esther is an unfolding of Divine Providence. 1. An unseen power behind human affairs. 2. Ultimate just awards both to evil and to good. 3. Prosperity of the wicked ending in adversity. 4. Adversity of the righteous ending in prosperity. 5. Poetic exactness of retribution, e. g., Haman and the gallows. 6. Minutest matters woven by God's shuttle into the fabric of His design. See chap. vi: 1. 7. Yet no fatalism taught here, but prayer, resolve and independent action. 8. The name of God is not found in the Book, perhaps to hint that the hand which regulates all these things is a hidden hand!

XIII. One of the most marked examples of "Design" is the camel. From bony frame to hair of coat nothing could be omitted or improved with reference to its uses as the servant of man. So viewed, seeming defects and deformities, like the hump and callosities, become beauties. The seven callosities sustain the pressure of the body when the camel kneels or rises, and keep the skin from injury by the burning sands. The teeth are fitted to cut through the tough desert shrubs; the nostrils, to close against sand drifts. The elastic pads on the feet, tough as horn, yielding as sponge, fit the "ship of the desert" to move noiselessly yet harmlessly over the roughest road. The stomach is made to digest with relish the coarsest plant-tissues; and special reservoirs for water are provided, from which the beast may draw as he needs from day to day. The hump is a repository of fat, to be re-absorbed as food when other nourishment is lacking; while the camel's very build shows that God meant the beast for burden, not for draught.

XIV. Christ's interview with the adulteress (John viii.) is a most remarkable presentation of 1. Divine Wrath, holy indignation against sin cloaked behind hypocrisy and accusation of others. 2. Of divine judgment, compelling self-conviction, and exhibiting the self-repelling power of simple holiness. 3. Of divine grace, forbearing, forgiving, restoring, toward a condemned and penitent sinner.

XV. Thomas Aquinas wis one of the most remarkable men of the thirteenth century. An accomplished scholar, a devoted student, a master logician, rich in dialectic powers, prodigious in memory, he was singularly pure in life and inflexible as iron. His fellow students nicknamed him "The Dumb Ox," from his size and silence; whereupon his master exclaimed, "This dumb ox will give such a bellow in learning as all the world shall hear!"

XVI. Conscience is like the human eye. When the light is most diffused and dim

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