as rather to intimidate the spectators, than win their applause. But if his design was to make a book useful to pastors, and think. ing men who have any serious work to do in fighting Mammon, he has succeeded. The book is an epitime of all the best arguments on the subject. By extensive reading and patient thinking, the author seems to have gathered a fruitful harvest of facts from nature, art, history, and science. And these are made to enforce and illustrate the different arguments with great power, and sometimes with an adroitness which reminds one of the quaint divines of the seventeenth century; so well packed, too, are these diversified materials, that in the smallest space we have a condensed thesaurus on the subject of benevolence.

The levity of the Introduction-which so singularly contrasts with the sobriety and energy of the essays, that some future Disraeli may be led to embalm it among the Curiosities of Literature -indicates that the author is a beginner. Occasional instances of extravagant speech, and a certain unnatural vigor of style which the reader will meet in his progress through these fertile pages, will more and more establish that conclusion in his mind. The book is probably the anonymous venture of a writer who comes out in book form for the first time. There are no juvenilities in it, however, and the public will be at a loss to know whether it comes from the sanctum of some young pastor, or some ripened theologian. For ourselves, we are free to confess that we have met with no book, by old or young, on this subject, which can equal the vigor, the pungency, and the earnest spirit, of these Jubilee Essays. If this writer should be spared to continue the life of diligence and thoughtfulness and religious purpose, which his first book exhibits, he cannot fail to be useful in bringing in that unselfish life which he advocates.

LETTERS ON THE MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEL.* There is no one in the land whose opinions upon most subjects are entitled to more consideration than those of President Wayland. He must be heard, when he speaks of his own ministerial work and office, with peculiar interest. The brief personal allusions, the bits of autobiogra

Letters on the Ministry of the Gospel. By FRANCIS WAYLAND. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1863. 16mo. pp. 210. Price, 60 cents. [New Haven: Judd & Clark.]

phy scattered up and down this little volume, are the most suggestive portions of it. They have a rugged honesty and even pathos which render them very impressive. They will be read by many a minister with deep searchings of heart.

We trust that what is said in the chapter on "a call to the ministry," will be heeded by those who sit upon ordaining councils, and will tend to counteract a serious evil tendency to lower the divine vocation of the ministry. How often do we hear the candidate, at his ordination, answer the question, "What reason have you to think that you have been called to the ministry of the Gospel?" by saying that "he considered it on the whole the field in which he could do the most good." This does not come up to the New Testament conditions. Christ said: "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." Congeniality of literary or religious taste, to the ministerial work, does not satisfy that requirement of "the inward call of the Holy Spirit," confirmed by external providential pointings, which it is necessary not to lose sight of, if we desire to maintain the ministry's divine appoint-ment and end. Vinet says, "Public preaching is comparatively easy and agreeable; only then can we be sure of our vocation, when we are inwardly drawn and constrained to the exercise of the care of souls."

There are many other things in this volume in which we heartily concur. It is healthful and bracing. It is earnest and solemn. Undoubtedly many of its reproofs are just, and will act as a blast of north wind to clear away the languid and mephitic vapors which hang about the office and work of the ministry. We should be glad to notice those faithful words of an approved servant of Christ and his church; but we have something also to say in way of dissent from certain views presented in these letters, or rather from the mode in which they are presented.

In various parts of the book there is a bearing down with great severity upon modern methods of preaching. The impression is certainly left that the author considers modern preaching as having no saving grace; as not being aimed at the conversion of souls, (p. 59); as delivering the message of the Master for personal ends, (p. 59); as substituting a "secular" for a Biblical style, (p. 55); as addressing the taste and imagination instead of the conscience, (p. 103), etc., etc. Some of these charges, though they may contain truth, are, we think, too sweeping. Others

leave out of account the fact that the age is changing, and, through the influence of a wide-spread popular education, is advancing intellectually; that it demands more thoughtful and precise forms of expression; that it is not satisfied with the mere logical assertion of truth, but requires attention to those interior wants of the mind itself when working upon the great problems of divine truth. Dr. Wayland, it strikes us, does not make that proper discrimination between false and true learning, or the false and true use of it by the preacher, which we should have expected from him. There is something hard and sarcastic in the way in which learning, taste, and the imagination are alluded to, as employed in relation to the preacher's work. They are not the most essential qualifications of the preacher of the gospel it is readily admitted, but they are certainly not to be despised or overlooked. We lately happened upon a passage in Coleridge's writings which might be quoted here as expressing a different view of the matter. "Religion," he says, "is the poetry and philosophy of all mankind; it unites in itself whatever is excellent in either, and while it at one and the same time calls into action and supplies with the noblest materials both the imagination and the intellective faculties, superadds the interests of the most substantial and home-felt reality to both. It must reign in the thoughts of a man and in his powers akin to thought, as well as exercise an admitted influence over his hopes and fears, and through these on his deliberative and individual acts."

But we do not admit that it is a fact that modern preaching produces no immediate spiritual fruits, or that it is entirely addressed to the intellect and imagination. We ask, when has preaching been more blessed by God to the conversion of souls, than in late years? Individual hearts are constantly coming under the power of the Gospel; and revivals of religion have come now to be the rule, instead of the marvel and exception of fifty years since. There is also a freer spirit of benevolent activity in all directions,-a more inspiring union of hearts and hands in the service of a personal Redeemer-than ever before in the history of the American church. The Gospel, at this moment, has more power upon the popular heart and will, to move to Christian action and self-sacrifice, than at any previous moment. We are therefore disposed to take a much brighter view than the author does, of what Christ is now accomplishing for the Church and the

world through human instruments and preachers, although their modes of "holding forth the word of life" may differ somewhat from those of the past. It cannot be expected that modern preaching should be precisely like that of the apostles. It should enunciate the pure apostolic truth, in those forms of thought and expression best fitted for the instruction of the present age.

In the Chapter, "Is the ministry a profession?" Dr. Wayland regards the ministerial office as having sunken to the grade of a mere "learned profession," and as having about lost its original apostolic character and simplicity. That it has not lost its spirit of devotion to the work of Christ, we might point to many of our young and some of our older ministers who have left their pleasant fields of labor at home, and are sacrificing their health and strength-(of course we do not mean the hireling scapegraces among them)-as chaplains in the army; and to hundreds and thousands of Pastors in New England and at the West, who are patiently laboring on pitiful salaries and amid disheartening difficulties, to build up the Redeemer's kingdom. But more than this, from all we can learn, we should judge that the modern ministry forms actually less of a professional class than it did in old times in New England; when the minister, wrapt in a mist of erudition and sanctity, was a myth during week-days, and issued forth in the hebdomadal dignity and terrors of a gold-headed cane and white cravat, to thunder to an awe-struck congregation. A minister now a days lives very much like other men-lives a natural and Christlike life, in true sympathy with all classes and conditions of men. He must manifest the spirit of his master in his life and conversation, or his office will not save him.

But to the question put by Dr. Wayland, "Is the ministry a profession?" it might be answered, that it certainly does not form a "caste" or "order" of men who can arrogate to themselves any peculiar social or civil distinction. Yet the ministry is undeniably a distinct office in the church, one of special divine appointment, not promiscuously assigned to all Christians, and worthy of a certain degree of respect. It should also, in these days of a refined and learned scepticism, be filled by intelligent and well-educated men-"able ministers of the New Testament." If this means a "learned profession," then it is one.

In outward forms of ministerial life and manners, as in preaching, the immense historical difference between the age of the

But let us conThey were the

apostles and our own, may account for many things which are not to be laid to the door of a moral and spiritual decline. Ministers now preach in regular church edifices, and live in settled houses, which the apostles did not. They may even now and then visit "picture galleries," which the apostles did not. We are not indeed so sure that Paul did not walk through the Pinakothek at Athens, as he certainly noticed with great effect the statuary which stood around the Acropolis and Mars Hill. Dr. Wayland would seem to argue that the occasional recreation or vacation of the minister is opposed to the apostolic example. Doubtless there may be much reprehensible self-indulgence in this respect. sider that the apostles had a peculiar work to do. planters of Christianity. They were the evangelists of the truth to the nations. They could not stop to cultivate or develop the minor graces of a Christian civilization, or hardly to rest themselves from their toils; but they were sowing the seed broadcast over the world. It is sometimes argued that we should never laugh, because the Saviour never smiled! This has not been proved; and thirty years of his life are unrecorded. But think of the work our blessed Saviour had to do! Think how it pressed upon him, and how he was straitened until it was accomplished! Could, indeed, any man drink of his cup, or be baptized with his baptism? He was a man of sorrows" in order that we might reap abundance of joy. We feel that there may be error in carrying the grace of the gospel too far, but we also feel that we may greatly err in not carrying it far enough, and in retaining something of the old ascetic spirit which is ever cropping out in some form in the church, and which must always be doing something in order to meet God's favor.

While, therefore, we would commend the words of wisdom and admonition contained in this little volume, we are very decided in our convictions, that there are some views in it which are not in harmony with the sagacious liberality of its author; whose own example has done as much to infuse into the modern ministry a free, and practical spirit, as that of any other man in the country.