off under the Seal of the State? If so, then we beg leave to say, "God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

We would humbly suggest that His Excellency also make an occasion, while thus engaged in extra-official duties, to eulogize the deep reverence for God's Word, the strong doctrinal creeds, and the prayerful, holy life of those men who won trophies "in the sacred cause of God and their country."

We must not omit to say, how deeply moved to grateful emotion we have been by the very encouraging notice of the Congregationalist. It gives at length our table of contents, and then saith as follows, to wit: First, we are "comely"; at which we blush with maiden modesty. Second, we exhibit a surprising "lack of strength, both of thought and of orthodoxy"; to which we say, good, as indicating an improved standard of thought and orthodoxy, where, in both, it is greatly needed. Third, we are capable of achieving a "respectable and influential position"; almost too much for our maiden modesty, considering its source; and, in addition to the "comely":

"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursel's as others see us!"

Fourth, we may be expected to do "both good and hurt"; quantities, respectively, not given, but the sentence seems to read very much like a balanced account, or thus, plus six added to minus six, equal to nothing; a mighty alleviation, as coming from a quarter where the bare apprehension of what we were going to do excited so much uneasiness beforehand. Lastly, there is mingled warning, fear, and prophecy, done in mingled mother-tongue and Latin, that, if we don't take carethe very thing which we mean to do- we shall come into "a dusty immortality upon the old pamphlet-shelves in the cellar of Burnham's great perfugium librorum exanimorum!"

The pathos of this last is so touching, that we are afraid somebody has got there already.

THE friends of the Boston Review will understand that this enterprise is not a personal interest, but that we have gone forward in it in compliance with the earnest entreaty of the friends of a staunch Puritan theology. We have no agents in the field. We do not intend to send out any, but must depend on those who love the old theology to see that our subscription-list puts us beyond all pecuniary anxiety.

Will not our brethren help the common cause by sending in at once a few subscribers each for the Review?

BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. I.-MAY, 1861.-No. 3.

ARTICLE I.

DOCTRINAL PREACHING.

"How myche spicry is more powned, by so mych virtu is encresid in pyment, so how mych we pownen more goddis spechis in expownynge, bi that we heerynge, as drynkyng, ben more holpen."

"Cristen men owen moch to traveil nygt & day aboute textis of holi writ, and nameli the gospel in her modir tunge."

"Symple men owen not dispute abowte holi writ, whether it is sooth or profitable to mannes soule: but thei owen stidfastli to beleven that it is verri soth & profitable to alle cristen men.”

-Wiclefs New Testament. Prologues, 1, 2.

WHAT can a minister of the Gospel preach if he does not preach doctrines? Christianity is nothing else than a system of principles, with their consequent and relevant duties. A State has its bill of rights and statutes, a corporation its constitution and by-laws, astronomy its fixed facts and principles, and arithmetic its rules. Revealed religion, in like manner, has its facts, truths and doctrines. The relations of men to each other, to God, and to eternity, and the duties growing out of these relations, find a frail foothold and a precarious existence, as pertaining to revelation, till there be a doctrinal body or framework to which they can pertain.

The doctrines of Christianity are as the bones and skeleton of the human body. They determine not only its symmetry

and strength, but they predetermine its very existence and continuance. In them are the hidings of power, and around them are the compactness and nobleness of the human structure. The muscles are nothing except as they spring from the bones, and are braced and strained and made operative by them. So Christian duties and activities are nothing except as doctrines produce and invigorate and perpetuate them.

Physiology teaches us that a good proportion of the nutriment of the child must be adapted to make bones, otherwise there will be in the child imbecility, disease, deformity and death. And it assures us that something more than a milk diet is needed to furnish this osseous solidity and strength for opening manhood. Theology has suggestions of a like kind, and an old school writer on this topic speaks of those who had used only milk, and could not bear strong meat, and so were feeble and sickly. The duties of the citizen are unfelt, unforced, unknown, except as the principles of the statute-book reveal, suggest and demand them. The perception of civil justice and the power to administer it, protection in right, a sense of security, and ability to live orderly, useful and happy lives, spring from and abide in the dry formulas of law. The Gospel in like manner is a system of doctrines revealing, suggesting and demanding a certain manner of life. Precepts grow out of those doctrines, practice is the legitimate fruit of them, and exhortation to duty is based on them. What is Christian life but certain principles in practice? Duty is the offspring of doctrine.

What, then, can a man preach, if he does not preach the doctrines? He can no more come to duties without them than to inferences without premises. He can reach a duty logically, and press it powerfully, only as he starts in the assumption or proof of a doctrine. As well teach practical surveying without previous teaching of the first principles of arithmetic and geometry. This ignoring, therefore, of doctrinal preaching, and this clamor for the "practical" as separate from the other is a stupendous blunder, and a devout folly. It has in it neither philosophy, common sense nor Scripture.

Suppose one, in the way of exhortation, or "practical preaching," urge his hearers to flee from the wrath to come.

The

exhortation or sermon is based on the doctrine that there is a coming wrath. If the hearers are not well persuaded on this point the exhortation is impotent. It is when Lot believes the angel and sees the heavenly tempest that he hastens his steps.

A sinful man is urged to accept salvation by Christ, but that cannot be his duty on your dictum. He has a right and a necessity first to know that he is a sinner, and in a lost state, and that the merit of Jesus Christ has been provided for him, and is adequate, and freely offered, and may be had on trust and a sorrow for sin.

The court-room has no peculiarities, no comforts for the good, or terrors for the evil, till its walls are lettered over with the words of the law. And the plea of the lawyer there, and the solemn session of the jury, have no force except as facts in evidence are urged, and there borne home by the creed of the court and the principles of law.

We are not, therefore, surprised that those preachers who discard the Shorter Catechism, and lightly esteem the use of doctrines in the pulpit, are troubled with a scarcity of biblical and sacred themes. To meet this difficulty some reduce the number of religious services on the Sabbath and between the Sabbaths. Others abbreviate their sermons as in an economy of topics and material. And yet others make any and all subjects common to the pulpit that can be forced into seeming relations to moral truth and duty. Indeed it is a fact notorious that those pulpits in all denominations, that have disowned doctrinal preaching, have been the least scrupulous on topics, and the most fruitful of extraneous themes. In proportion as they have departed from the old-school policy and practice of abundant and thorough theological discussions, their pulpit has assimilated itself to the rostrum of the lyceum and the platform of politics, and given itself to intermeddling with radicalism of all kinds and guises on social, moral and civil questions.

We can appreciate the draft and pressure on the resources, and inventive powers, and tact in using daily occurrences, of that man who is under contract to preach the Gospel through the year, and for years, to the same community, while he or his people have put under ban and embargo the very staple of a Gospel sermon.

Some, yielding to this clamor against doctrinal preaching, or gratifying their own inclinations in refraining from it, seek a refuge in the graces of rhetoric and oratory. They revel among adjectives, and disport themselves among tropes and figures. Forgetting that the words of the true preacher are but messengers, they add duplicate wings and the tail of the bird of Paradise to their carrier-pigeon. And even then, instead of being loosed and sped on its errand, they keep it pluming itself in its pulpit cage, and showering its added colors and incumbrances to the praise of its owner. And when such preachers add that "bodily exercise which profiteth little," in the pulpit, their great efforts are wonderfully powerful for six or twelve months.

Others indulge in the natural sciences, as showing the glory of God. They speak of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; and they speak of beasts, and fowl, and creeping things, and of fishes. And boarding-school misses, and sophomoric youth, pronounce the preaching "beautiful" and "lovely." And for a season such preachers are the wonder and the admiration of the village.

The artifices of all such as attempt to generate a power for the pulpit, after they have banished its only legitimate force, are of brief success and continuance. Soon their sermons become as a series of circulating decimals, the same integers reappearing with ciphers between.

Herein is disclosed the secret of the failure professional, of so many clergymen in the prime of their days. The graces of composition, the artifices, and captivating accomplishments, and novelties of attitude, gesture, intonation and expression, lose their power over the same hearers after a little time, or they wear away with the early professional years and ardor of the man. Not having learned to work that ever new and fresh and inexhaustible mine of doctrinal theology, his power for the pulpit is now gone. His own people and early admirers weary of him, and perhaps through their own fault, when they tempted him to an exclusion of the doctrinal forces of the pulpit.

The Evangelical Pulpit shows few sadder sights than a preacher just past his meridian, and by whose rhetoric and delivery audiences were once enchanted and enchained, now able