the closet-be content with a religion that lives only in public, but in private is listless and dull-and your ministry will soon become proportionably spiritless and inefficacious.

KNOWLEDGE.

Next to piety, the sound knowledge you should possess as a minister, so as to fulfil the ministry you have received, is that to which I proceed to direct your attention. He who is professedly a teacher of others ought unquestionably to be himself a man of knowledge. Who can impart what he does not possess? The master of oratory has well observed, that "no man can be eloquent on a subject of which he is ignorant." Knowledge, however, is not the gift of nature; which furnishes us only with the faculties for obtaining it, but leaves the attainment to our own assiduity. It is the result of the mind's exercise of its own powers in acquiring the ideas of others, and increasing and maturing its own. These operations of its powers must be untiring and incessant. A moderately gifted mind, that is yet continually augmenting its stores, and its power of using them to effect, is, in my view, to be preferred to one of larger acquisitions and more splendid endowments, that remains stationary.

"Take heed," says an old minister to a young friend whom he was addressing, "of growing remiss in your work. Take pains while you live. Think not that after a while you may relax, and go over your old stock. The Scriptures still afford new things to those who search them. Continue searching. How can you expect God's blessing, or your people's observance, if you are careless? Be studious not to offer that which costs nothing. Take pains that you may find out acceptable words. Let all your performances smell of the lamp. This will engage the attention of your people. Feed the flock of God which is among you. Feed the ignorant with knowledge, the careless with admonition, the wandering with direction, and the mourning with comfort."

CHARACTER.

This will have an imperceptible but considerable influence upon your ministry, and of course on your usefulness by it. Every thing in your behaviour will be referred to your ministry, and viewed in connexion with it; and this circum

stance attaches importance to certain points in reference to yourself, which would be comparatively trivial in others. Such, for instance, are all infirmities of temper. These will be marked, and appear glaring in you, because of the elevation to which your office raises you, and the notice it causes to be taken of you; as flaws in objects exhibited to public gaze are familiar to every eye. The contrariety of such defects to the art of self-government which you inculcate, and are expected to exemplify, will negative the force of all your exhortations, as implying either the impracticability or the futility of your advices.

There are certain indiscretions, into which the very distinction that our office confers upon us, and the attention it causes to be paid us, if great care be not taken, will betray us. These arise naturally out of the weakness or vanity of the human mind. In some young ministers this vanity betrays itself in a fondness for show. They launch out into an expenditure, and adopt a style of living beyond their means, under the idea, that this will lead the men of the world to respect them the more in their ministerial character. Thus they fall into pecuniary embarrassments, which operate as a clog upon their ministry; fettering their minds with cares and anxieties, and bringing themselves into bondage to individuals, who may not always be generous or noble enough to forget it. The debtor is servant to the creditor, as well as the borrower to the lender. But mere outward show, especially when known to be deceptive, and incompatible with our circumstances, instead of attracting respect, leads to an unfavourable opinion of our prudence or our principle, that must be detrimental to the effect of our ministry. However narrow the income of a minister may be, he is bound so to circumscribe his expenditure within it, as to "owe no man any thing," and to have something to spare for charity. Should the people among whom he labours be so poor that they cannot, or so parsimonious that they will not, afford him a competency, he is justified in leaving them, but nothing can justify him in running into debt.

PREACHING.

Your principal attention must be directed to that which is the main duty of the ministry, and to which its efficacy must be chiefly owing,-the preaching

of the word. Upon the style and character of your preaching, every thing will depend. Aim above all things to excel as a preacher. For this purpose, see that you are possessed of all the proper requisites; knowledge, utterance, liberty of speech, fervour of affection, self-possession, boldness. There is an indescribable something in a good preacher that takes hold of the attention of mankind, in the absence of which no efforts can raise us to the proper standard. But it is incredible what improvement may be made in the gift of preaching, by taking pains to excel, and being resolutely bent, in humble dependence upon God, on achieving it. You are aware of the feebleness of utterance, and impediment of speech under which he laboured at first, who afterwards became the most impassioned orator of Greece

One great rule for attaining excellence is to be constantly shunning and avoiding defects. Some of these relate to matter, some to manner. Of the former may be enumerated, poverty of thought, little variation of ideas, superfluity of words: of the latter, the chief relate to utterance. The rapidity of some prevents any thing from resting on the mind to impress it, or remaining in the memory for subsequent reflection; the slow drawling tone of others is equally unfavourable to impression. Nothing, however, is more carefully to be guarded against than a monotony of cadences, a perpetual recurrence of similar tones throughout a discourse, whatever be the change of topics or variation of theme. This is the bane of oratory, and would render the addresses of an angel powerless. Observe the methods of different preachers. Look around you, and see what is most successful, and what is useless: shun the one, cultivate the other.

From manner, however, I proceed to offer a little friendly advice on the character of your previous preparation for the pulpit. Neither let the memory be overloaded with what is previously prepared, nor yet so little furnished as to overtask the powers of invention and combination at the time.

The style of composition for the pulpit should be equally free from pomposity of diction and colloquialisms, or vulgar forms of speech. Yet it should be racy and familiar. It should neither be crowded with ornaments, nor encumbered with pedantry. What is preaching,

but an ordained instrumentality for a specific end? That end is the conversion of sinners to God by the truth, and the edification, by the same truth, of those already converted. What has a preacher to do with culling flowers of rhetoric to please the fancy, or amassing stores of learning to gratify the curious and ingenious? Sufficient provision is made elsewhere for the entertainment of the imagination, and for communicating the stores of literary information. Let the pulpit be sacred to its grand object, the winning of souls to Christ, and the improvement of the character of those who are won.

Without intending the most distant reflection on any particular persons, I cannot forbear to express my conviction, that the general style of preaching in this country is characterised by a formal and tame correctness. Its greatest fault is, that it aims to avoid faults, rather than to aspire to the highest degrees of excellence. It points at too low a mark. Its blamelessness is its weakness. It were better to commit a thousand blunders in attempting something loftier and upon a wider scale. There is all the regularity and rigidity of art, but little of the freedom and spontaneity of nature. Natural sensibility, indeed, is repressed and subdued by an anxious solicitude to obtain the reputation of being chaste and correct speakers. Hence our most impassioned efforts are frequently but artificial bursts, previously elaborated, and, of course producing but little effect. "If thou wishest me to weep," says the orator, "thou must weep thyself." But never think of moving me by the stale and common tricks of an artificial oratory. I can no more be affected by superficial emotion than I can be warmed with painted fire. If, trammelled by a solicitude for the approbation of the critical and judicious, we are never able, at any time, to throw our whole soul into our subject to let it take hold of us and carry us away with it,- -we shall never powerfully seize upon others. Our auditors will be at leisure, because perfectly cool, to make observations on our manner, and to be amused or surprised at our seeming extravagance. The reason is obvious: we cannot carry them along with us by clamour, and we have no hold upon them by sympathy. Instead of hanging on our lips, with breathless expectation to the close,

tholic Professors of Rome and Tubingen; between the archbishops of Cologne and Strasburg; the one of whom condemns in Hermes, what the other maintains in Beaoutain, while the infallible Pope sanctions both the prelates thus frequently opposed to each other; between the worship of France, where the people are content to listen to the Latin chaunting of a few priests, and the same worship in Germany, where all join heartily in beautiful German hymns; between the priests, of whom some distribute the Bible to the people, while others commit it to the flames, calling the distribution the work of the devil? We should never end, were we to search in the History of the Romish Church, for proofs of such unity as the contradictions of its councils and its popes might furnish: no! not even with the splendid invention of sending to Rome, by substitute, every man's reason and conscience, have they been petrified into unity. The reason is simple : it is God-it is his Spirit-it is his word, which alone produce unity-the only possible unity-men will always attempt it in vain. And, in my opinion, were it possible by any means to produce this external union, resembling that of an army which marches in order, because the first duty of a soldier is to become a machine, it would be an incalculable evil to the Church of Christ: a certain proof that spirit had given way to form-life to death. Christ desired it as little for his spiritual kingdom, as for the natural, in which all is harmony, though with the greatest possible diversity of form. We have from his own mouth a striking proof of this:-One of his disciples, eager for his Master's honour, and for their external union, (we are all popes at heart,) came to him one day, saying in a tone of triumph, “ Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us, and we forbad him, because he followeth not us." What said the Lord, "Forbid him not! for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me," Mark ix. 38.

But the unity which Christ desired— that which he sought for his disciples in his last prayer, (John xvii. 22, 23,) is that of faith and love, that which must exist among the members of the body of Carist from their union with the head; such as exists in the vine; branches drawing from a common root sap, life,

fertility. This unity is found under the most different external forms; under various creeds, and in various communions. The spirit which creates this unity between minds submitted to its influence, flourishes under all forms; pervades them all, forces the life-giving sap under the dry bark of the most different plants. There is not the least external union between the different religious sects of Britain; on the contrary, they are divided by minor points of doctrine, by different views of ecclesiastical government, by place and position. But ask the Episcopalian, the Baptist, the Wesleyan, the Independent, where rests their hope of safety ? and all-one hand on the Bible, the other raised to the cross of Christ, will give you the same answer, which will be confirmed by the preaching of the Gospel in their respective churches, and by their efforts to spread far and near the same saving truths. It is under this point of view, that it is most instructive, most delightful to look at the religious state of England. At first one is saddened by the want of external union; afterwards, one is rejoiced to find every where the doctrine of Christ crucified. And whence this deep and lively sympathy for each other, which is instinetively shown by those who love the Saviour a sympathy which leads them at once to recognize a love among each other a brother, even when unlike themselves in every other respect, in habit, education, rank, language, and country? This is the unity the Church confesses in the most ancient of her creeds: "I believe in the communion of saints," a sweet and comforting union amidst the discord of earth-a foretaste of the joys reserved for those who are born of God, which they will possess in their fulness, when they are perfected in the bosom of the eternal Love, which will be their life.

But what have these reflections to do with the title "History of a Book," which I have placed at the head of this letter? Much; for the book to which I allude, is a new and delightful proof of the real unity of Protestant Christians. The title of the book is, "One Lord, One Faith," and no book ever more thoroughly justified its title by its contents. Your readers have doubtless not forgotten the interesting parish of Carlshuld, converted under the ministry of Lutz, from Catholicism to the evangeli

cal faith; nor its present devoted pastor, M. Palchner. They will remember also that two servants of God, Messrs. Fliedner and Leifoldt, deeply feeling for the poor and oppressed parish of Carlshuld, conceived the happy idea of publishing, for its benefit, a collection of sermons. The result of this enterprise has exceeded our boldest hopes; in a few months seven thousand copies of the work were sold. But I wish to speak especially of the contents of the book, or rather of the unity of faith and principle of which it is so remarkable a monument. It consists of fifty-three sermons, produced by thirty-one different countries, of which sixteen are states where the German language is spoken; four are Swiss cantons, and the eleven are other European nations. Here then we find a double unity —that of charity, coming eagerly from all the corners of Europe, to the aid of a poor fold of brethren, shut up in the marshes of the Danube, and that of principle, confessing openly, one Lord, one faith.

Here we have united, the voices of men who for the most part never have seen, never will see each other on earth; men belonging to such differing creeds and forms of worship; men whose characters, education, studies, talents, differ widely; and yet all these voices form an harmonious concert

of truth, faith, and charity, as though they had been brought up in the same school, under one master. Yes, this supposition is true; they have been brought up in the same school, that of the word and Spirit of God; under one master, Jesus Christ. But this school, and this master suffice to lead them into all truth, according to the promise of Christ to his disciples. For the thousandth time this striking fact shows us, that the Bible speaks clearly enough to those who are willing to hear: and that neither the reproach of absurdity brought against it by infidels, nor the superstitious care of the Church of Rome, which does not allow it to speak without an interpreter, has any foundation in truth. But why, in the happy times in which we live, need we isolated proof, when, from Paris to Philadelphia; from London to Calcutta; in our old churches which have revived, and our new churches which have sprung up under the breathing of God's word, and under the voice of devoted Missionaries ;-all that is in motion in Christ's kingdom, all that has life, all that is engaged in defending the Gospel, has, like the author of this book, but one Lord, but one faith!

[The letter then enumerates the subjects of the various sermons, only one of which, a sermon by Dr. Chalmers, is the product of our country.]

Extract of a Letter from the late Dr. SHOULD any tell you that your baptism is not sufficient or legal; convince him of his mistake, if you can, and show him that his assertion is false. Your baptism is as legal and as effectual to Christian and civil purposes as that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This was ever the sense of our law in reference to the baptisms performed by Dissenters; but it had not fully expressed that sense till a few years back. I attended the arguings in the Court of Arches, before Sir John Nichol, in the case of Kemp v. Wickes, clerk, who refused to grant Christian burial to the child of the former, being a Dissenter; because he alleged it had not Christian baptism, being baptized by a Dissenting minister. But

Adam Clarke, to a Wesleyan Preacher.

the learned Judge examining the practice and doctrine of the Christian church from the Apostles till the final revision of our Liturgy, proved that in all cases where water was used as the element, and the sacred name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, invoked in the act of sprinkling or immersion, then baptism was administered to all Christian ends and purposes, without any particular reference to the person who officiated; that the church always abhorred the iteration or repetition of baptism even in cases where persons officiated who were deemed heretics, when it was fully proved that water was used, and the person was sprinkled or dipped in the name of the ever-blessed Trinity. He then gave it