shall bear with it through eternity-that no other man can correct his mistakes, or supply his deficiencies, or atone for his faults. What he does, must remain forever essentially unchanged; what he neglects to do, will remain undone. Even professional enthusiasm, without this higher sense of the moral relations of his calling, will prove an insufficient incitement to fidelity to the claims of duty. It may ensure all due attention to pupils of quick parts and aspiring minds, but this is precisely the class which has least occasion for the teacher's aid. The less gifted, the tardier mind, the timid, the thoughtless, and even the indolent youth, has claims upon the teacher not less sacred, and the untiring zeal, and patient, conscientious fidelity with which he applies himself to the self-denying work of developing such minds, so far as they are susceptible of improvement, and of doing his best with every individual committed to his instruction, constitutes the highest test of excellency in his vocation. Whoever is above or below this toilsome detail-whoever does not think any sane mind, made immortal by its God, worthy to engage his solicitude and his labours-has no special calling to the work of a teacher. He may win a reputation by his success with apt, ambitious pupils; but his negligence, impatience, contempt for others, who are also to be trained for eternity, intellectually as well as morally, and the scantiness of whose resources the more urgently demands a painstaking culture, are offences against humanity and morality, which it would not be easy to characterize by epithets too strong. We dwell the more earnestly upon this topic, because a very considerable proportion of our educated young men engage either for a season or permanently in the business of teaching, and we would inspire them with a deep sense of the responsibilities they perhaps too inconsiderately assume. We would encourage them to enter upon this work with enlarged views and the most Christian purposes. It ranks next to the Christian ministry in its intimate relations with man's highest interests, and in the dignity of the greatest usefulness. More properly, it is itself a Christian ministry, co-operating with the Gospel in exalting the human family to intelligence and purity, and in fitting men for the joys and occupations of heaven. Lower views than these of the teacher's function will prove too feeble to sustain his vigour and fidelity under the trials and distastes incident to his vocation, and to resist the temptations to discouragement and relaxed effort, which perverseness, indolence, and inaptitude will never fail to supply; while the consciousness of toiling, not with the low ambition of qualifying a few more gifted pupils to acquire distinction in literary or professional life, but with the holy purpose of preparing all, according to the measure of mental capacity bestowed upon them by the Creator, for the destinies of their endless being, is likely to prove an unfailing source of encouragement and strenuous activity. In conclusion, we apply the teachings of this discussion to the Christian ministry. All who aspire to this holy function, our argument admonishes to come to its toils prepared to put forth the highest mental and moral energies with which nature, study, and the grace of God have endowed them. Here, more even than in any secular pursuit, success is proportioned to the spirit of consecration and self-sacrifice in which the work is done, rather than to the measure of native or acquired endowments. Such a spirit, however, supposes the most earnest endeavours to acquire qualifications for usefulness no less than earnestness in the use of them. It breathes itself forth in the preparations of the closet no less than in the efforts of the pulpit. God has joined these things together, and the man who presumptuously puts them asunder does it at the certain peril of his usefulness, no less than of his reputation. That Divine grace which, beyond all controversy, is the great element of saving power, does, with great uniformity, co-operate with the clearest, strongest, and most earnest inculcation of truth; while the preacher whose thoughts are feeble, puny, and obscure, and uttered heartlessly, is never likely to be honoured with a sanction which might be mistaken for Heaven's approbation of ignorance or indolence. The church has never more reason to be ashamed than of ministers who no longer try to preach well-who only go to their study to read newspapers and periodicals, and have nothing fresher and better for the pulpit than the dry, cold fragments of oft-tasted feasts, or the yet more refuse and unwholesome viands which the troublous agitations of the moment are able to galvanize into some of the lower forms of life. It is wonderful that the least spark of piety should not deter men from bringing such cheap offerings before God. And yet one often hears such moral enormities justified and defended on something like logical and Christian grounds. The minister should not be forever pressing upon his highest notes. He should guard against the danger of exciting expectations which he will not be able, without much inconvenience, to satisfy. It is not quite compatible with humility to labour so incessantly after uncommon thoughts and classical expressions. The minister must come down to the common mind if he would not lose the sympathies of his audience. The most common argument of all-it betrays an overweening confidence in human effort, and too little sense of dependence upon God, to lay so much stress upon great sermons. These truisms must all essen tially fail of sheltering laziness and folly under their philosophic or saintly garb, since in so far as they are of any application to the subject, they are embraced by the rule which ever demands of the preacher's hands the best effort he is able to make. It is great folly, as well as great arrogance, to talk of coming down to the popular mind. The sort of slip-shod, meaningless preaching to which we have adverted, is beyond all other human performances, incomprehensible by a popular assembly which grasps with ease and spontaneous intuition the luminous thoughts, and terse, clear argumentation and analysis of a really intelligent, earnest man. There is contagion in the movement of his spirit, and the hearer drinks in the deep import of his words without a tithe of the labour it costs to sift the eddying chaff of an empty, unimpassioned mind. The objection with which we are dealing takes it for granted that a sermon, which is the product of thoughtful, studious hours, must be dark with tantalizing metaphysics, or with turbulent scholastic or transcendental jargon, as if the man who thinks most vigorously, and prepares most carefully and systematically, were not more likely on that account to speak intelligibly. The theory suggested by our subject, as well as by every rational view of the Christian ministry, is not over-solicitous about the production of great, or learned, or highly-finished, or eloquent sermons; but it does imperatively demand that every preacher of the Gospel should put forth his utmost energies both for preparation and for performance -that he keep his soul all alive to the sacredness and fearful responsibilities of his calling-that he shun as a fatal, damnable dereliction, a negligent, perfunctory ministry, which satisfies itself with decent, easy routine, and deems it no offence to bring into the Divine presence a maimed sacrifice, that costs neither study nor prayer, and conciliates the favour of neither God nor man. So far as results are concerned, the measure of capacity or learning is of infinitely less importance than the spirit in which the work is done. God does unquestionably employ in his vineyard a great variety of talents and attainments, and he honours every man according to the fidelity and spirit of consecration with which he fulfils his mission; but there is no place for the idle-none for those who are only half awake-none for those who are not prepared to "make full proof of their ministry," who are not of a fervent spirit, ready to endure hardness, or bonds, or death, for Christ's sake. It is a source of unspeakable satisfaction, that, in defiance of evermultiplying temptations to worldliness and ambition, so many of our educated young men are devoted in purpose to this sacred calling. Let them be entreated to remember well that the Chris tian ministry is not a work for drones. "Be ye strong." "Quit yourselves like men." Make your sacrifices in a liberal, magnanimous spirit. Hold no base parleying with flesh and blood. Ask of the Crucified, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and let the responsive oracle be henceforth the law of your being. O rejoice to lay your talents, and your scholarship, and your life at the foot of the cross! "I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong." By the grace of God you can achieve something worth living for. Be ever mindful of what Divine resources are at the command of your prayer of faith. Seize upon them all, and consecrate them all to the service of Him "who hath loved you, and given himself for you." Shun no labour-no sacrifices. Give the best of your life, of your learning, of your genius, and your eloquence, if you possess them, to Him from whom you have received much more than all of these. You will be enriched by what you give. You will be made strong by the efforts you shall put forth. Such a consecration opens the way to the only true distinction. The only ambition worthy of a Christian scholar here finds its appropriate field of display. ART. V. THE INCARNATION. 1. God in Christ: Three Discourses delivered at New-Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. By HORACE BUSHNELL. Hartford: 1849. 2. The Doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in its Relation to Mankind and to the Church. By ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, A. M., Archdeacon of East Riding. London: 1848. 3. Theophany; or, the Manifestation of God in Jesus Christ. BY ROBERT TURNBull. Second edition. Hartford: 1849. 4. The Person and Work of Christ. By ERNEST SARTORIUS, D. D., General Superintendent and Consistorial Director of Königsberg, Prussia. Translated by C. S. Stearns, A. M. Boston: 1848. 5. Letters on the Eternal Sonship of Christ. By Rev. WILLIAM BEAUCHAMP, with an Introductory Essay, by Leroy M. Lee, D. D. Charleston: 1849. THE Person and Work of Christ is emphatically the great theological question of the age. Underlying the whole fabric of Gospel truth, it has to do with the faith, the experience, and the hopes of all Christians. Interwoven as it is with all the doctrines and institutions of religion, it seems to constitute a part of each, or rather the grand centre from which they all radiate. In itself a question of paramount importance, it infolds all the minor questions of revelation and religion. The apostle terms it the "great mys This is the sub tery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh." lime mystery of our holy religion. Our faith centres in it; our hope clings to it; and our very yearnings of soul impel us onward in humble effort to comprehend its majesty and glory. So long, then, as this sublime mystery stands in the gateway that opens to heaven, and mortals are looking and hoping to enter by "the door," this question must open freshly before the successive generations of men. From the very nature of the case it must always be mooted and discussed in every succeeding age, as it has been in every past age; unless, indeed, humanity shall succeed in fathoming the unfathomable mysteries of the Godhead—the finite grasp and encircle the Infinite. But circumstances have given at the present time a momentous importance to this subject. Modes of thought and forms of expression, derived from a certain school in Germany, have been gradually working their way into our metaphysical and speculative philosophy, have also entered the domain of theology, and are endeavouring to subject its principles to new and untried, if not inapplicable tests. The cardinal and long-established doctrines of the Christian faith are to be subjected to a new and most searching re-examination, with a view to the general renovation of our established theological systems. These theological revolutionists are determined to dig down to the very foundations of Christianity, and to remodel the whole fabric upward. Without reverence, they enter the sanctuary of revelation, and assail its most sacred truths with a ruthless and arrogant criticism, that tramples everything Divine beneath its iron hoof. In this school, man becomes a critic and an umpire, inspecting Christianity as a system-not so much with a view of being instructed and blessed by it, as of discovering its defects, and making it more precise, critical, and philosophic in its character. Far different this from being a disciple in the school of Christ! In such a school of criticism and speculation, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, his essential divinity, and his atonement, or vicarious death, furnish fruitful subjects in which "old Christianity" is to be recast, newly moulded, modernized by the "new philosophy." The results of this attempt to philosophize Christianity, are seen in that rank denial of the inspiration of the Divine word which reduces the Bible to the level of common books, bating only its high antiquity, and its historical and literary character; also in that rank denial of the character and mission of Christ, which reduces him to the common level of humanity, or converts his whole history into a myth, having no foundation in historical fact. We are not, however, protesting against the re-examination and |