an individual, that expedient is usually one of the first adopted, and it is as naturally the chief business of an organization so formed, to disseminate and give popularity to the false views of its head. But the formation of such a party, is one of the greatest evils to which the church is ever subjected. When an individual disconnected with others, and unambitious of notoriety, falls into error, and contents himself with inculcating it in the narrow circle within his immediate influence, his false doctrines are comparatively harmless. But when one of a restless and aspiring temper, embracing essential error, attempts to make it the instrument of conspicuity and aggrandizement, and forms for that purpose a subservient party, the evil obtains a much more rapid and extensive diffusion, and advances to a far greater intensity. The dissemination of error is then made the direct and sole object of the party, is accomplished with a speed proportioned to the numbers who are united in it, and the vigor with which their efforts are directed.

But those, who from motives of worldly policy withhold the truth of the gospel from their people, usually are not long content with concealing it. They soon find themselves under the necessity, in order to accomplish their end, of advancing still farther, and exhibiting an open hostility to the truth and its friends. Regarding its prevalence as unfavorable to their aims, the same reasons that induce them to conceal it from their people, will also, when it is presented to them by others, lead them to endeavour to disarm it of its influence by assailing it, and misrepresenting its supporters. Those who faithfully teach the doctrines which they disown, will be viewed as antagonists, and employed in obstructing their schemes. Thus in effect assailed they as a matter of course assume the attitude of defence, and from neglecters and disowners of the truth, immediately become its open and resolute opponents; and prompted as they are by unprincipled passions, their warfare is marked by all the ingenuity of a sharpened selfishness, and the malignity of jealous ambition. Let the whole hosts of the enemies of the gospel be scanned, and those of them who are the most active, the most fertile of expedients. and the most relentless and implacable, will be found to be-not they who are prompted in their hostility by sincere convictions-but they who are governed by a rank and unprincipled lust of popularity and power. They are its bitterest enemies; for they hate it,

not because they believe it to be error, but because, though they know it to be truth, they regard it as an obstacle to their wishes. Their hostility is thence a deliberate and deadly malice, whose aim can only be accomplished by the extinction of the object against which it is directed.

It scarcely needs to be remarked, that the influence of this course on the morals of those who pursue it, is pernicious in the highest degree. Accustomed in so important a part of their agency to disregard the authority of God, they soon learn to break over a wider circle of restraint, and become evil generally in their practice as well as their principles. Subordinating all other interests to the demands of selfishness, they are withheld by no scruples from the use of whatever means may promote the attainment of its objects— Intrigue, treachery, misrepresentation, calumny, are accordingly employed by them with as little reluctance as others. How indeed can it be otherwise? How can a scrupulous veracity, an inflexible uprightness, a sacred regard to the rights and welfare of men, in other relations of life, be expected of those who exhibit a total absence of them toward God; who are false and malicious in the office of the sacred ministry?

After religion itself, with all its infinite sanctions has been trampled in the dust, how can it be expected that any inferior inducements to the social virtues which may be deemed still to subsist, can command a paramount regard? All history of the past, presents a different result. We search in vain for virtue in those who are governed in the sacred office by a worldly ambition. Whited indeed, like sepulchres, and beautiful without they may appear to distant spectators, but an interior inspection will discover them to be fraught only with the elements of pestilence and death. They who fear not God, are not accustomed justly to regard men. They who are supremely selfish and treacherous in the most momentous concerns, are not likely to be marked by integrity in affairs of inferior importance. The shipwreck of the faith, may justly be expected as a natural consequence of swerving from a good conscience, but a shipwreck of morals, is directly involved in a conscious and deliberate departure from the faith.

Such is the usual, the natural career of those who make the sacred office the instrument of vanity and ambition; and they as naturally persevere in it without reform to the

end of life. Abandoned to the sway of selfish affections, forsaken of the Spirit of God, inflamed with a deadly hostility to the truth, they are surrendered wholly to the dominion of evil influences, and going on from worse to worse, live and die in open warfare against God. Such is the spectacle exhibited by all those whose history is presented in the sacred volume; Korah, Balaam, the false prophets cotemporary with Jeremiah, Judas Iscariot, Diotrephes; and such is their history in all subsequent ages. Deliberate and malignant enemies of the truth, like those that blaspheme the Spirit of God, they seem never to have forgiveness either in this life, or in that which is to come.

This view of the principles on which they act, who thus swerve from their duty, and the career which they usually run, leads to a melancholy estimate of not a few now in the sacred office. That there are numbers in the churches who have two sets of doctrines, to be avowed or disowned as exigencies require; one which they profess when desirous to appear orthodox, but which they withhold from their people; another which they disown in their professions, but zealously inculcate in the desk, is a fact of general notoriety. Recently large assemblages of them have united in asserting their faith in doctrines which they are well known not to entertain, and denying their belief in others which they notoriously hold and inculcate. What views then are we to entertain of their principles? What are the characteristics which they exhibit, if they be not those of infidelity? In the most important relations which they sustain; in the most momentous of their public acts, they proceed in the assumption that the great doctrines and representations of the gospel have no paramount claims to their respect-are of no truth or significance-are put to their proper use indeed when made the mere instrument of worldly aims; when bartered for a mess of pottage, or sold for thirty pieces of silver. Are they not then infidels at heart, and believers only in pretence? No other judgment can be rationally formed of them. Such a practice cannot subsist with that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen; which working by love, and purifying the heart from inordinate attachment to earthly good, overcomes the world. The utter absence in them of these traits, is the most absolute proof that they are destitute of true faith; that their religion is not a principle, but a profes

sion, not a deep seated and predominant affection, but an artifice whose end is attained, when wealth, popularity and power are its fruits.

How fearful is the doom which awaits such ministers in the next world! Having denied Christ here before men— he will there deny them before the father and the holy angels. They will not be acknowledged as his friends who would not here acknowledge his authority over them. They will not then be received to his kingdom, who would not here submit to his reign. With what a sense of their presumption will they be overwhelmed when they find that the infinite Being, with whose rights and authority they had trifled, indeed exists, the creator, possessor and ruler of the universe, and that his rectitude, aversion to sin, and purpose respecting its punishment, are such as his word represents. With what agony will they contemplate the prostitution of their office to the purposes of ambition-the rejection of the blessings of an immortal life, for the transient distinctions, the guilty enjoyments of this.

ART. VI. MINISTERS AND THEIR INFLUENTIAL HEARERS. By the REV. J. B. WATERBURY, of Hudson, N. Y.

EVERY faithful minister, who has had a few years' experience in his work, has seen and felt the extreme difficulty of so presenting the truth before the impenitent mind, as to bring upon it a conviction of personal guilt and danger. It is in no disrespect for the office-work of the Holy Spirit that we thus speak; for we do not, for a moment, concede to man a power to produce that conviction which terminates in the conversion of the soul to God. But must not such means be used and such arguments adduced as, in their nature and tendency, are adapted to produce conviction? Certainly they must. We should preach, both with respect to matter and manner, as if the salvation of souls depended on the force of our logic, and the pungency of our appeals; whilst, at the same time, we are to remember that all will be vain unless God shall give the increase. On this point there is, we

apprehend no diversity of sentiment among the faithful servants of Christ.

But ministers of the present age, in their official efforts to save souls, lie under difficulties and embarrassments peculiar to the state of society in which they live. When the apostles and primitive preachers went forth to proclaim the gospel, besides being men of preeminent piety, and in numerous instances, gifted with miraculous powers, they had, in some respects, a more favorable field of operations. We do not mean that they met with a reception more cordial, or encountered prejudices less violent, and a depravity of lighter shade; for in these respects their difficulties were certainly as great as ours; but we allude to the fact that there existed a strong line of demarcation between those who embraced and those who opposed the doctrine of the cross. Men were for Christ, openly, avowedly, or they were against him. The Jew was obstinate and full of hatred against the innovators; so also was the proud and polished Greek. The lines being thus visibly and distinctly drawn, there were none who could long take shelter under the covert of professed neutrality.

At this primitive period, also, congregations were not organized in the manner, and according to the principles, precisely, which characterise those of our times; where men, not improperly termed "almost Christian," are as numerous as the professors of religion; and where such men, externally at least, are as scrupulous in the discharge of the social duties as many of the pious are. The first preachers of the cross had, it is true, the difficult task of demolishing pre-existing systems, but they had not in general the hard and almost hopeless one of showing, that two men may be apparently honest and generous amiable and moral, and yet the one be a friend, and the other an enemy of God. diverse is the state of society, now from that in which they lived and labored, as to require of us more vigilance, in some respects, than in them, lest, for want of proper discrimination in our preaching, men shall suppose themselves safe when they are sinking to perdition.

So

At the present day, and especially in the country where it is our privilege to labor, all are nominally christian. They stand classed, generally, in two divisions, professors and nonprofessors. The former includes, doubtless, the great body of real Christians. Among them may be some who are selfdeceived, and a few, we hope very few, who have assumed