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more clearly the true ground of our reliance.

Our expectation is from God and the power of his truth. The minister, whatever he may fail to do, will not fail, if a true Methodist, to preach Christ crucified. The simple prayers will, we trust, be mighty through faith. We expect that, in answer to them, God will send down the Holy Ghost and convert the people, and they will go away with their faces turned toward heaven, instinct with the new principle of action, that God will judge them for the deeds done in the body. Henceforth they walk with a conscience-more vigilant than your night patrol-giving forth oracles of law and righteousness in tones more distinct and startling than the alarms of your fire-bells. Its conservative influence will soon be felt on the exchange, in the shop, at the polls, around the fireside.

I think it right to improve my subject by another practical application of its doctrine. It is, perhaps, but reasonable to expect, that men who build a new church and organize a new congregation in this day of light and progress, should avail themselves of the fullest benefits of experience, and of the advancement of Christian knowledge. For the same reason that we should not expect a new church with a sharp roof, and a high pulpit, and two or three tiers of galleries, we might expect some care to be used in securing the best internal organization for harmony and efficiency, and for purity of doctrine and discipline. The experience of this age is abundant in suggestions on these and other points of great moment; and it is natural, on such an occasion, to inquire whether the movers in this new enterprise have profited by the new lights that shine so thickly and clearly upon this generation. I have not learned that they have given any heed to these interests, and I rather presume that they have not, but have been content to proceed pretty much on the old plan. I believe that the great majority of Methodists give themselves but little trouble about such matters. Hav

ing entered the Church to serve God and save their souls, they have been mostly busy with those pursuits; and having felt no serious inconveniences in fact, have not thought worth while to look for them in theory. Another large class have studied the system, as well as tried it, and they like it well in both aspects, and that after being very faithfully admonished from many quarters that it contains too little or too much of the democratic element—that it gives too little or too great scope to clerical authority. I think there is a growing feeling among us, that that can not, upon the whole, be a very bad system of faith or action which saves so many souls and does so much good; and that, with so many pressing demands on our attention, we may, for the present, adjourn the consideration of evils which many can see, but nobody feel. We are beginning to honor our plan, because God honors it. We do not claim that it conforms exactly to any Scripture model, but do believe it has been fashioned by the hand of Providence, which is just as much as we are able to believe of any other scheme of Church government. Upon the whole, though there may still be some diversity of sentiment on minor points, I think there was never more general harmony on questions of this sort. We can not say so much, but I think we can nearly as much, with regard to several questions thrown up by the action of the voluntary associations of the day; each, it has been thought by some, should be brought upon ecclesiastical grounds, and so made a Church question. Many individual churches, it is well known, have been remodeled in this way, and made to embrace in their creed or discipline the new and special views of their members on matters not formerly thought to come within the proper scope of Church authority. The builders of this edifice have made no provision for these cases, choosing to travel on in the old paths; and so, as a body, our large denomination is likely to decide this question. We have not thought it wise to introduce new terms of membership, or to identify the Church with objects

good in themselves, it may be, or evil, but yet belonging to men as citizens rather than as members of an ecclesiastical organization. The Gospel proposes the cure of all evils, but can not take counsel or law from the rashness, or policy, or impatience of the world. It will work in its own way, and go on offering Christ crucified as its only remedy, and the Spirit as its only agent. Good men may be impatient of delays, and may push on material changes in advance of moral preparation; but they will learn, from sad reactions, how little is gained by outrunning God, and how feeble a champion the Church is, when she wields carnal weapons, or spiritual for secular ends.

I will not conclude without making a brief application of my subject to the religious agitations of the times, in which all denominations, and none more than ours, have a vital and most urgent interest. I will confine myself, as far as practicable, to what I esteem the great principle involved in these questions, as it becomes one not perfectly familiar with particular facts, as he can not be who dwells even a little way from the theatres of controversy. I would refer less to manifestations than to tendencies, which I think nobody can be mistaken in regarding as strong toward great and manifold departures from what have usually been regarded among us as the economy and spirit of the Gospel. I am struck with the fact that these agitations are wholly confined to denominations styled evangelical, and that all under that category have felt them, while sects which have kept to a lower type of theology were never more quiet. We must not look at the present moment, but to the current, for true and adequate views on this subject; and the history of even a few years will teach us that disasters, sufficiently various in their developments, have been very general in their extent, if not traceable to some common source. The tendency of which I speak is manifested in many ways. It might be difficult to determine whether men are just now more

clamorous and dogmatical in their advocacy of the new or the old-of neology or tradition-of the fanatics or the fathers. And though public attention is just now mostly engrossed with a single manifestation of what, I fear, we must regard as a disease of the times, ought we to forget that its name is legion? Recent as we are in our origin, our own Church presents, in our measure and type, all or nearly all the phenomena of the moral disease that rages around us. We have inquisitive men who are looking forward, and others who look back in quest of change and light. Since our cornfields were planted for the ripened or just-garnered harvest, we have had a new Church organization, embodying all improvements up to the present hour, and so making manifest the form and pressure of true Wesleyanism, as distinguished from the old, the corrupted, and the effete. We have long had, both in England and here, a Primitive Methodism, relying chiefly upon a stricter conformity with the original model. So it is, that while not a few ingenious men are engaged in removing the rubbish of the past, others of opposite tastes are mining in our young antiquity, faithfully and joyfully announcing whatever in the history of our golden age-which they commonly place about the close of the war of the Revolution-may serve to show how many things which they do not approve got into our system, and others, which they like better, were left out. The very numerous Presbyteri. an family, constituting certainly one of the purest and best branches of Christ's Church, are hardly emerging from protracted contests that involve the great principles in such general debate. We have heard all the changes rung upon the old and the new-loud calls onward to greater changes, and backward to Saybrook or Geneva. Ingenious, learned champions have taken the field. New doctrinal propositions have been elaborated. Bridges have been thrown over the chasms which time has exposed or made in the old religious metaphysics, and the web of argumentation or of sophistry

has been spun fine as gossamer, and as transparent.

Just

now another denomination, venerable for its antiquity, sound in its creed, and rich in its calendar of confessors and martyrs, feels most the shock of the strife. What is most interesting in all this is to learn, if we can, controversy and threatened revolution. to the new-this eager looking back to the old?

the basis of general Why this rushing on

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XVI.

ON DOING GOD'S WILL.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.-JOHN, vii., 17.

THE language of the text does not convey precisely the idea of the Savior, and there is, perhaps, no passage in the New Testament, not incorrectly translated, which gives so feebly the import of the original. The "will do" of the text does not mean future action, but voluntary and earnest action, and the "shall know" might, with more propriety, be rendered shall ascertain. Thus understood, and herein nearly all commentators concur, our text teaches that, in its highest and best sense, religion is an experimental science, and that the knowledge of it, so attained, is satisfactory and certain.

The Gospel, without abating any thing from its demands to be received as a divine revelation of God's only way of saving sinners, claims the benefit of a simple and practical test, and puts its disciples upon the true, philosophic method for ascertaining its truth and power. For this purpose, and to this extent, it descends into the common arena of human investigations, and calls upon us to proceed in the settlement of its pretensions upon the same principles which, at a much

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