Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

For the Methodist Magazine, and Quarterly Review.

BISHOP M'ILVAINE'S CHARGE TO THE CLERGY.

A Charge to the Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Ohio, on the Preaching of Christ Crucified; delivered before the Seventeenth Annual Convention of the Diocess at Chillicothe, Sept. 5th, 1834, by CHARLES P. M'ILVAINE, D. D., bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Ohio.

We cannot easily express the pleasure with which we perused this production of Bishop M'Ilvaine. From the importance of the subject indicated by the title and the high reputation for piety and talent which the author enjoys, we expected much, and we are happy that our expectations have been fully realized. Several considerations have induced us to think that we should perform an acceptable service in spreading the outlines of this excellent Charge before the readers of the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

1. We should cherish a grateful remembrance of our obligations to that Church from one of whose dignitaries it proceeds. It was in her bosom that our own Wesley was trained up. He was born within her pale, baptized into her faith, reared by her hand, educated at her academies, grounded in her sentiments, imbued with the principles of her homilies, and animated by the spirit of her martyrs. If the Church of England had no other claims to the gratitude of the world, this is sufficient to lay us under eternal obligation, that she gave birth to a man who was the instrument in the Divine hand of the most glorious revival of religion the world ever saw, since the days of the apostles-a revival which, bursting forth from Oxford, has spread into the four quarters of the globe, and, we think, is destined to spread more and more until it shall usher in the splendors of the millennial day.

2. It will be gratifying, we doubt not, to the friends of our own Zion to see what is doing in other sections of the vineyard. The Christian cause is essentially one cause, as the spiritual Church is vitally one body. 'We are every one members one of another.' • If one member suffer all the members suffer with it, or if one member be honored all the members rejoice with it.' It is for narrow-hearted bigotry to look with jealousy upon the advancement which any sister denomination is making in the true interests of Christianity. But holy love, the true spirit of Jesus Christ, only asks, 'Is Christ preached?' and in the affirmative it ever rejoices, yea, and will rejoice.' Now this is our rejoicing in the present case. We find Christ preached not only in name but in fact, and in a way that we think calculated to dif fuse a most salutary influence throughout the diocess of Ohio. We congratulate that portion of the Church on the possession of a diocesan who we believe will conscientiously use his authority and influence in the propagation of soundly evangelical principles.

[ocr errors]

3. The subject of this Charge is one of pre-eminent importance, and delivered in a day when it is imperatively necessary that the trumpet should give no uncertain sound.' The great confliction of religious opinion which has been agitating the world for the last few years, has struck out some singular forms of error, and presented them to the public in a manner peculiarly calculated to militate against the truth

[ocr errors]

as it is in Jesus.' From the various antiquated species of heterodoxy, the Church seems to be, at present, in little danger. They are too well understood to make any great advances among us, at least in their old forms. Christianity cannot now be divested of all appearance of spirituality and practical influence, and retain the respect of even the irreligious. The great enemy of mankind has therefore fallen upon new expedients. Great appearances of zeal, and self denial, and the assertion of high views of spiritual and practical piety, are blended with most dangerous defects in doctrine. In some cases the doctrine of self conversion is taught; in others altogether nugatory evidences of conversion are held forth and insisted on; and these are followed by the insidious doctrine of the impossibility of falling from grace-the impossibility of forfeiting a conversion which itself is no conversion! Powerful inducement to rest in a state of nature, alienated from Christ, and without God in the world! But that which strikes us as the most alarming feature of our times is the neglect of Christ in the pulpits. It is no uncommon thing to hear whole sermons in which the Savior is not mentioned. He seems to be utterly divorced from His own system. We seem to have a religion without a Savior; a sacred altar, but no officiating High Priest; a holy and awful Deity, but no atonement or Mediator. And when the awakened sinner feels the claims of the Divine law, and trembles at the view of infinite justice and purity, there is nothing placed upon which hope may rest-nothing between him and absolute despair. Or it may be, that in the agony of his mind he is told to trust in the mercy of God and he will be forgiven; and every argument that is used is drawn from reason and nature, to prove that God is love,' and scarcely any thing is said, perhaps nothing but a mere transient allusion, to show the only true ground of a sinner's hope, and the only decided proof of God's mercy to fallen and guilty man, the gift of His Son for our redemption. The poor condemned sinner may be amused by some cunning theory or some rhapsodical expressions, in which there is no satisfactory exhibition of Christ as the Savior, until his agitation subsides, and his convictions in a great measure pass away. Then his conscience is lulled with false views, and he settles down in a belief of his own piety, when he has never found redemption through the blood of Christ, even the forgiveness of his sins.' Or it may be that his sympathies, having been powerfully excited, his stimulated imagination is suddenly struck by some vivid or impassioned expressions, and he is thrown for a moment into a transport of emotion. He possibly calls it conversion, and yet he can afterward give no satisfactory evidence that his hope is based on Jesus Christ. Different classes of persons will exhibit different modifications of error, as they are characterized by variety in mental habits or constitution. Those whose characters are marked by an exuberance of feeling will fall into the latter error. Those whose reason and judgment preponderate, will fall into the former. But into which of the two they fall it matters but little ; they are both equally anti-christian and destructive. As we do not believe in a religion that has no Savior, neither do we believe in that conversion that does not recognize Christ in His atoning and redeem. ing character for there is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved.' And that preaching, whose tendency

6

is not to place Christ as the only ground of a sinner's hope, and then to keep Him in view as the only trust of the believer, begins with laying another foundation than that which is laid' in the Gospel, and finishes by daubing the unsound edifice with untempered mortar. Thus its commencement is in error, and its termination in destruction. But it is time to take up the Charge, which has called forth our reflections. We find here a remedy for these defects. It is a Scriptural view of the duty of preaching 'Christ and Him crucified.' To do justice perhaps to the intellect displayed in this production, we might be induced to quote other passages than those we shall select. But our business is chiefly with the sentiments, and our estimate of their importance must determine our quotations. After having set forth the design of this address, and adverted to the variety of topics in the apostles' ministry, as well as the diversity of their talent, and the various characters of their hearers, the author observes,—

'-there was one subject in which all hearers were taught to behold the beginning and the ending of religion, the whole consolation of a sinful world—the whole business, strength, and glory of a Christian minister. They made it their invariable principle to know nothing, to glory in nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,' so that 'every where, in the temple and in every house, they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus Christ.' To set forth the glories of His person and of His work-to teach Him in His various offices and benefits, in His humiliation and death-in His resurrection and exaltation-in His freeness of grace to receive and His fulness of grace to save the chief of sinners; to persuade men to flee to Him as their refuge, to follow Him as their King, to rejoice in Him always as their everlasting portion, and always, and by all means, to glorify Him as Head over all things for His people; this was their life's business unto which they had so separated themselves as to be virtually dead to whatever might hinder its promotion.'

After having observed that without this preaching of Christ,' all learning and wisdom and eloquence will be in vain, as it respects the salvation of souls, and that consequently all our prayers and talents should be concentrated upon this object, our author proposes in the prosecution of the subject two purposes. The first is to show how near a minister may come to the appropriate design of his calling, and yet fall short of it. The second, what it is really to 'preach Christ crucified.' Under the former of these heads we find some very judicious and important observations. For instance,

"It is possible to preach a great deal of important truth having an essential relation to the Gospel,-truth unmingled with any erroneous statement or principle. ** It may speak often of Christ and pathetically describe His agony and death,' and yet be so meagre and confused, so general and feeble as to all those vital doctrines which lead to Him, and spring from Him, and depend on Him, which lay the foundation and bind together the whole structure of Christian faith, as to be wholly unworthy the name of preaching Christ. * * * * How often is the preaching about Christ confounded with preaching Christ-preach, ing from the imagination with preaching from the heart. The minister may thus deceive himself, and the great majority of his people may

be thus deceived; while some obscure, unlettered disciple, whose draughts of truth have been taken undiluted from the wells of salvation, will be sensible of some painful deficiency; and the anxious inquirer, thirsting for the Gospel, will listen and wait in vain to be taught what he must do to be saved. * * * It is one thing to prove that there is no salvation but in Christ, and quite another to teach a soul, panting for mercy, how he is to win Christ and be found in Him.'

*

Let these remarks stand as a reproof against all such preaching as leaves the Savior out of view. For if thus to preach Him fall short of the true character of Gospel sermons, what shall we say of those who preach as if there was no Savior. Many are the discourses which would draw forth the melancholy exclamation of a pious man after listening to such defective preaching- Alas! they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.' I remember myself a pious and simple-hearted Christian who dare never approach the mercy seat himself, without distinctly recognizing and acknowledging in his own heart the ground of his access, after hearing a prayer of this nature, observe: I had to keep saying to myself, for Christ's sake-for Christ's sake-or I could not have got along with it at all.' We have frequently heard prayers as well as sermons in which nothing could be discovered to identify them as evangelical or Christian, except perhaps winding up with the Savior's name, and from the negligent manner it might be doubted whether even this was done from any heartfelt purpose, or from mere habit, or gracefully to round off the period. Now it is a question which is worthy of serious consideration, How far can that person be deeply conscious of his obligations to Christ, of his dependence on the atonement ;-how far can he be aware of the only ground and term of our acceptance with God and access to the throne of grace, who does not purposely, feelingly, and constantly urge this plea at every approach to the mercy seat?* It is not in our view sufficient that the sentiment itself be in the person's creed. The question is, How far is it a living, operating principle in the heart? If we are justified and saved only through Christ, if our prayers are to be offered in His name, and if answers are to be expected for His sake alone, how far are we to expect to be heard, or answered, or saved, if there be not a constant feeling of our dependence on Christ, and such a feeling too as fills the heart and forces the lips to give it utterance? If from the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh, it seems to us the heart cannot be very full of the love of Christ our Savior, nor deeply sensible of its dependence on Him that does not in prayer make mention of His name, indispensable as it is, to our obtaining an audience with Deity. Yet we would not set up any arbitrary standards of judgment, nor decide uncharitably in doubtful cases. We submit it as a question for consideration, and hope it will not be passed lightly over.

*We hope we shall not be understood to signify that the name of the Savior must be repeated at the end of every sentence. This would become painful, if not profane. We mean that in every prayer there must be express mention of the ground on which we come into the Divine presence. It ought to be made near the commencement, and repeated or alluded to in the progress, just as a heart humbly depending on Jesus Christ alone would naturally prompt, but always with the spirit and the understanding also,'—with reverence and sincerity.

There is another feature in the above extract not less important. We mean the distinction between preaching from the imagination and preaching from the heart. We are endowed by our Creator with various faculties, and each faculty has its appropriate functions. It is moreover a law of our nature that each faculty responds to its kindred faculty. Mind affects mind, reason excites reason, imagination kindles imagination, and heart moves heart. Now as it is impossible for physical power to control the intellectual movements, so also it is impossible for imagination to move the heart, or the pure emotions of the heart to stimulate to any great extent the imagination. We do not deny that there is a sympathy between all our faculties, and that stirring one part will spread the undulations over the entire surface. Yet the chief commotion will be at the first point of action. From thence the influence spreads out farther and farther until it dies away in its distance from the part whose tranquillity was first disturbed. Any person may have proof of what we say by observing the effects produced on his mind by the perusal of any author. He will not find his imagination stimulated by reading Locke on the Understanding, or Butler's Analogy; nor his reason and judgment improved by novelists and dramatists: nor his heart and conscience awakened by Blair's Sermons, nor his devotional feelings enkindled by Moore's Sacred Melodies, beautiful as they are. But this is the very reason they do not affect us; they strike us as the work of the imagination, and there is about them too much evidence of effort. His figures glitter and sparkle like the moon beams among icicles, but there is no heat in them. On the contrary, read the hymns of the Wesleys, and though the illustrations are often admirable and poetic in the highest degree, yet they are evidently the breathings of the heart; and therefore they reach the heart.* Hence some splendid sermons produce no moral effect. The effort is too apparent. There is more pains bestowed upon the language and imagery than upon the thoughts or tendency.

[ocr errors]

* Those who are too fond of embellishing their sermons, who study the language more than the thoughts, and manner more than matter, would do well to consult more carefully the principles of sound criticism. In Kames' Elements we find the following judicious remarks, chap. xviii, sect. 2. The language ought to correspond to the subject. Heroic actions or sentiments require elevated language; tender sentiments ought to be expressed in words soft and flowing; and plain language void of ornament is adapted to subjects grave and didactic.— Language may be considered as the dress of thought; and where the one is not suited to the other we are sensible of incongruity, in the same manner as where a judge is dressed like a fop, or a peasant like a man of quality.' Again chap. X, 'A serious and important subject admits not much ornament; nor a subject that of itself is extremely beautiful; and a subject that fills the mind with its lof tiness and grandeur appears best in a dress altogether plain. It may be laid down as a good general rule, that whenever, excepting in poetry and works professedly of imagination, the mind is more struck with the words than with the thought, there is a deviation from nature and from sound judgment. The auxi liary then takes place of the principal. For this reason those, generally speaking, are the most indifferent preachers who call forth the observations-What a flow of language! What charming figures! Such preachers generally entertain their hearers with pretty words and sparkling images, instead of feeding them with knowledge and understanding. It is like setting a hungry man down to a dish of syllabub; it may perhaps gratify his palate, but it yields no nourish

ment.

« AnteriorContinuar »