-

feelings by intimating the "final cause," certainly without the great public ever suspecting it, he is gently translated into some other service or field for which he is peculiarly fitted. Sometimes a feeble man is saved to his central position so as by fire. Perhaps an influential person or family interposes a shield between him and an uneasy majority, threatening to withdraw or withhold subsidies unless they behave better. Perhaps he takes a trip to Europe- which often gives as much tone to his people's appreciation of him, as to his own digestion. Perhaps he rests from toil for three or six months, which also gives his impatient people time to reconsider their

ways.

Or without resorting to these violent measures, he substitutes more frequent and more select exchanges; more frequent repetitions of select sermons; stirring the tender sensibilities of his people by frequent and pathetic allusions to the crushing responsibilities of the minister, and by judicious confessions in his public prayers, of the many infirmities of poor human nature, and by endearing himself generally to his people. Many a minister has raised the public valuation of his labors by diminishing their amount, as the Sibyl obtained for a few surviving leaves, the price refused to her whole book.

A few, of purer purpose and humbler consciousness of ability, succeed in the full sense of the word; maintaining a full and easy mastery of their position; healthy, cheerful, and ready; scholarly and yet popular; studious and also practical; genial and profound; unwearied in well-doing yet uncomplaining; growing in influence as they rise personally from strength to strength and from grace to grace — perpetually renewing their youth.

To these should be added the smaller few who are called off to other pulpits, or to other work, but who would have succeeded finely, had they remained. But what of the rest? "Where

are the nine?"

Without claiming to be extremely exact in our figures, and yet stating only what our knowledge of an average district leads us to suppose is the general law in regard to this matter throughout the orthodox denomination, we venture the assertion that the cases of success covering a ministry of twenty or

twenty-five years past — (and nothing short of such a period should be considered a success for a promising young man located in an influential centre,) - are about as follows: Two in Boston, (with the important consideration that both had previous settlements); none in East Boston, South Boston, Charlestown or Chelsea; none in Andover, Haverhill or Portsmouth, N. H.; one in Lowell, Nashua and Concord, N. H., each; one in Cambridge, Worcester, Springfield, and Providence, R. I., each; two in Hartford and New Haven, respectively; two in Salem; two in Portland, Me., and three in Newburyport! And this while the cases of failure in other churches in these same centres of influence are reckoned by the score, the term of service for each not rising to an average of five years; and bearing a poor comparison with smaller churches in the suburbs and rural districts.

We are aware that figures are not always to be trusted; but if these have only the average of figure-veracity in them, they show that the chances of success for a young minister in a centre of influence are slightly greater than those of a smart young man entering the dry goods' business in the same places; - the fraction of hope in the minister's favor being due, doubtless, to the fact that he is under the guidance of a good providence in a higher sense than his brother clerk of the counter.

We would not suppress the fact that in some of the instances of failure in these great centres the unhappy issue is owing less to the pastor than to the inherent weaknesses and unfortunate surroundings of the church. Evidently some fail because they cannot do an impossible thing for a needy church — and that the very thing for which a long list of candidates was called, and they at last chosen.

Add to all this the fact that the quality of the influence sent out from these centres is of necessity somewhat vitiated by the worldliness and fashion prevalent in such places. The popular town-preacher must always attend more or less generally more to Ordination Services and Lyceum Lectures; Anniversary Speeches and school-house dedications; flag-raisings, and welcomes and farewells to distinguished strangers. He must preach, perhaps prepare his discourse, knowing that it was preannounced on Saturday; that it is reported while he is delivering it, and then is to be scattered to the four winds on

Monday morning as a part of the perishable matter of a daily paper. What mind is able to remain spiritual and single-eyed to the great end, amid such distractions as these? Can a more unnatural and factitious ministry be imagined than this? Yet this is essentially unavoidable in all populous and influential

centres.

Besides when he is in his most spiritual duties, and in his best estate, pouring out his excited soul over the great "sea of upturned faces" beaming under the strong gas-light, and all highly pleased and, it may be, deeply moved, even then how evanescent the impression made! How it vanishes, when the gas is turned off! Short-lived, because extravagant, unnatural, and out of season! Of all the dreamy visions that float across the sky of the reader's memory, doubtless none are now more hazy, unreal, and uninfluential than the recollections of the brilliant, and it may be, powerful evening efforts of popular preachers which he has undergone in city churches.

How unlike is all this to calm, spiritual, lucid discourse called out by the known wants of a quiet, simple-hearted people. These brilliant and spirited, but short-lived charges upon the citadels of the human heart, how unlike they are, and as inferior as they are unlike, to the steady and cumulative influence of a long-settled pastor, growing among a growing people, leading out his flock and calling them all by name for a whole generation or more.

No popular preachers in centres of influence ever did their work more thoroughly than Drs. Griffin and Beecher when in the Park Street and Bowdoin Street churches of Boston. But in point of vital and lasting influence, what were these central churches in the metropolis of New England, compared with the rural parish in Franklin, even allowing that only the half is true of what Dr. Emmons's admirers claim for him? Truth is, popular speakers in the centres of influence have something else to do than to elaborate strong systems, or plant principles and watch their slow growth. Their life is all a brisk skirmish or heated battle, day by day, for specific results then and there. They have little to do with the grand and slow campaigns which settle the boundaries of nations for ages.

We are not saying but these popular centres must be occupied by somebody, and the unequal battle there be maintained

as best it may. But we are only insisting upon it, out of the love we bear our young brethren just entering the ministry, that these oft-coveted posts of honor are desirable only as early martyrdom for the truth is desirable.

And so we are constrained to say that some central parishes are very cruel. Considering their part only in this matter, and judging of it only from its outward seemings, one might conclude that their mission is to crush the fresh hopes of young ministers as the elephant crushes tender vegetation. Or one might compare them to the Winans Steam-Gun, which draws down shot into a central hopper in order then to hurl them off by a terrific centrifugal force, towards the periphery of things. And this, some of them are ever doing. They do nothing else. Their taste is formed to this, and they gratify and strengthen it by short pastorates and broken-down ministers.

It should be added, also, that some kind friends are both cruel and short-sighted. As, for instance, those who will venture all this for favorite sons or nephews, in face of the fearful odds against them; or they who hazard all this for favorite pupils who give promise of establishing an improved theology in important centres; without first sitting down and counting the cost, as the Great Teacher counsels those to do who propose war at a dire disadvantage.

Young ministers should think twice before they accept the advice of any dear or ambitious friend as to a settlement. If they covet a central position, they are presumptively unfit for it, and may only take a battery which they cannot hold. If they willingly yield to the partiality of friends who desire for them a position, the failure will be none the less certain, and the mortification of a surrender none the less keen. The shells fly remorselessly, and burst without discriminating nicely whether you rushed in headlong of your own accord, or were pitched in headlong by indiscreet friends. The two dangers combined are practically irresistible. With a reputation to be made hastily, and with zealous admirers to cry-On, Brother, on! it is not in human nature to be cool and prudent. The eyes enamored of some Big Bethel are not on the sharp lookout for masked batteries along the way.

ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel."-1 Cor. ix. 16.

EVERYBODY professes admiration of the Apostle Paul. Yet, as judged by the maxims which govern even the better portion of worldly men, Paul threw himself away. For he sacrificed the most brilliant prizes that can tempt the ambition of man, because he would preach a gospel which men did not want to hear. The Augustan age still lingered; Seneca and Persius and Quintus Curtius and the elder Pliny were his contemporaries. With his profound philosophical mind, his genius and versatility, what laurels he might have won in the field of literature, art, eloquence or statesmanship.

Even in the pulpit he might have risen to high eminence without preaching a gospel which men did not want to hear. As a Hebrew preacher, the whole broad field of morality was open to him, and men would have listened and applauded. What masterly orations he might have delivered on the Flood, and the Red Sea, and Moses, and Elijah, and David, and Ahithopel, and Balaam, and Nebuchadnezzar! Or, under the garb of a Christian profession, he could have discoursed with great effect on the dignity of man, and the amplitude of the Divine love, and all without preaching a gospel which men did not want to hear, and the fashionable people of Ephesus and Rome and Corinth would have crowned him with their praises. Paul knew all this; yet he says, "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel."

What was the gospel which Paul preached? Salvation by grace to men born in sin, totally depraved and under just sentence of eternal condemnation. Justification by faith, through Christ's righteousness; regeneration by the Holy Spirit; repentance toward God, a holy life, and final resurrection to immortal glory, according to God's eternal purpose and grace.

Why would Paul preach this gospel, so bringing on himself obloquy, and poverty, and suffering, and persecution, and death? Because God had taught him that it was true. He was a converted man; was made to understand that all his high morality and external religiousness could not save him, nothing but the blood of Christ. And knowing that what was true in his own case was true in the case of all men, could he have kept back the gospel, without being false to God as well as to his own conscience, and incurring a dreadful penalty?