in the style most natural or habitual. Can we wonder, then, that they admit a variety of interpretations? Now, we owe it to a book, which records, as we believe, revelations from Heaven, and which is plainly designed for the moral improvement of the race, to favor those explications of obscure passages, which are seen to harmonize with the moral attributes of God, and with the acknowledged teachings of nature and conscience. All those interpretations of the Gospel, which strike the mind at once as inconsistent with a righteous government of the universe, which require of man what is disproportioned to his nature, or which shock any clear conviction which our experience has furnished, cannot be viewed with too jealous an eye by him, who, revering Christianity, desires to secure to it an intelligent belief.

It is in vain to say, that the first and most obvious meaning of Scripture is always to be followed, no matter where it leads. I answer, that the first and most obvious meaning of a passage, written in a foreign language, and in remote antiquity, is very often false, and such as farther inquiry compels us to abandon. I answer, too, that all sects of Christians agree, and are forced to agree, in frequently forsaking the literal sense, on account of its incongruity with acknowledged truth. There is, in fact, no book in the world, which requires us more frequently to restrain unlimited expressions, to qualify the letter by the spirit, and to seek the meaning in the state and customs of the writer and of his age, than the New Testament. No book is written in a more popular, figurative, and animated style, the very style which requires the most constant exercise of judgment in the reader. The Scriptures are not a frigid digest of Christianity, as if this religion were a mere code of civil laws.

They give us the Gospel warm from the hearts of its preachers. The language is not that of logicians, not the language of retired and inanimate speculation, but of affection, of zeal, of men who burned to convey deep and vivid impressions of the truth. In understanding such writers, moral feeling is often a better guide than a servile adherence to the literal and most obvious meaning of every word and phrase. It may be said of the New as well as the Old Testament, that sometimes the letter killeth whilst the spirit giveth life. Almost any system may be built on the New Testament by a commentator, who, forgetting the general scope of Christianity and the lessons of nature and experience, shall impose on every passage the literal signification which is first offered to the mind. The Christian minister should avail himself, in his exposition of the Divine Word, of the aids of learning and criticism, and also of the aids of reason and conscience. Those interpretations of difficult passages, which approve themselves to his clear and established conceptions of rectitude, and to his devout and benevolent affections, he should regard with a favorable eye; whilst those of an opposite character should be regarded with great distrust.

I have said, that this rational method of preaching Christianity is important, if we would secure a firm belief to Christianity. Some men may indeed be reconciled to an unreasonable religion; and terror, that passion which more than any other unsettles the intellect, may silence every objection to the most contradictory and degrading principles. But in general the understanding and conscience cannot be entirely subdued. They resist the violence which is done them. A lurking incredulity mingles with the attempt to believe what con

Particu

tradicts the highest principles of our nature. larly the most intelligent part of the community, who will ultimately govern public sentiment, will doubt and disbelieve the unreasonable system, which, perhaps, they find it prudent to acknowledge; and will either convert it into an instrument of policy, or seize a favorable moment for casting off its restraints and levelling its institutions with the dust. Thus important is it that Christianity should be recommended to the understandings of men.

But this is not enough. It is also most important that the Gospel should be recommended to the heart. Christianity should be so preached, as to interest the affections, to awaken contrition and fear, veneration and love, gratitude and hope. Some preachers, from observing the pernicious effects of violent and exclusive appeals to the passions, have fallen into an opposite error, which has rendered the labors of their lives almost wholly unfruitful. They have addressed men as mere creatures of intellect; they have forgotten, that affection is as essential to our nature as thought, that action requires motive, that the union of reason and sensibility is the health of the soul, and that without moral feeling there can be no strength of moral purpose. They have preached ingeniously, and the hearer has pronounced the teaching true. But the truth, coldly imparted, and coldly received, has been forgotten as fast as heard; no energy of will has been awakened; no resistance to habit and passion been called forth; perhaps not a momentary purpose of self-improvement has glanced through the mind. Preaching, to be effectual, must be as various as our nature. The sun warms, at the same moment that it enlightens ; and, unless religious truth be

ness.

addressed at once to the reason and the affections, unless it kindles whilst it guides, it is a useless splendor; it leaves the heart barren; it produces no fruits of godliLet the Christian minister, then, preach the Gospel with earnestness, with affection, with a heart warmed by his subject, not thinking of himself, not seeking applause, but solicitous for the happiness of mankind, tenderly concerned for his people, awake to the solemnities of eternity, and deeply impressed with the worth of the human soul, with the glory and happiness to which it may be exalted, and with the misery and ruin into which it will be plunged by irreligion and vice. Let him preach, not to amuse, but to convince and awaken; not to excite a momentary interest, but a deep and lasting seriousness; not to make his hearers think of the preacher, but of themselves, of their own characters and future condition. Let him labor, by delineating with unaffected ardor the happiness of virtue, by setting forth religion in its most attractive forms, by displaying the paternal character of God, and the love of Christ. which was stronger than death, by unfolding the purity and blessedness of the heavenly world, by revealing to the soul its own greatness, and by persuasion, by entreaty, by appeals to the best sentiments of human nature, by speaking from a heart convinced of immortality; let him labor, by these methods, to touch and to soften his hearers, to draw them to God and duty, to awaken gratitude and love, a sublime hope and a generous desire of exalted goodness. And let him also labor, by solemn warning, by teaching men their responsibility, by setting before sinners the aggravations of their guilt, by showing them the ruin and immediate wretchedness wrought by moral evil in the soul, and by pointing them to approach

ing death, and the retributions of the future world; let him labor, by these means, to reach the consciences of those whom higher motives will not quicken, to break the slumbers of the worldly, to cut off every false hope, and to persuade the sinner, by a salutary terror, to return to God, and to seek, with a new earnestness, virtue, glory, and eternal life.