incident to the conversion of the world and the renovation of society is incompatible with the local constitution of the church, and logically involves both an ecumenical church and a hierarchical government.

(5.) The voluntary association is in accordance with the methods of the apostolic missions. They were pre-eminently spontaneous and individual, committing the continued prosecution of the work to the local church so soon as one was gathered on missionary ground.

(6.) It is in accordance with the common practice of the church ever since the apostles' day. Even the Catholic church never assumed to itself as an organization all Christian enterprises. Its missions and other religious work gave birth to innumerable orders and associations called into being for special work to meet the peculiarities of particular ages orders of monks and nuns, the Sisters of Charity, the Society of Jesus, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and many others, through which the diversified energies of the church found scope for action. It is in accordance with the universal usage of the church that there be Missionary Boards, Bible and Tract Societies, Young Men's Christian Associations, Temperance Societies, and others, giving scope to the diversified energies and interests of Christians, expressing the ideas and meeting the wants of particular localities and times, and disappearing when the specialty which called them forth has passed away.

(7.) This method of administration is recommended by its superior efficiency. This is an inference from what has already been said.

It may be added that the contrary principle, limiting Christian enterprise to what is done through the church as an organization, deprives Christianity of the credit of its indirect influences on society. The church is separated from the state, and ill-adapted to carry on social reform. Enterprises for political and social progress necessarily fall to individuals and voluntary associations, carrying out Christian principles to their remoter applications. But these, not being

recognized as legitimate agencies for Christian action, are thrown into antagonism to the churches, practical morality comes to be separated from religion, and the very influences of political and social renovation which Christianity originated are used as weapons of assault on the churches. This antagonism would be in a great degree avoided, and Christianity have the credit of the indirect influence on society which it actually exerts, if it was understood as accordant with the true conception of the church, that, while it remains from age to age the same, Christian enterprise is always to outreach the organic agency of the church, and enterprises and agencies are in every age to spring up around it, carrying out Christian principles to special applications and by special methods adapted to the exigency of the time.

On the contrary, if the church as an organization attempts this work, it insures a civilization, types of which have repeatedly appeared in history, in which the priestly element is dominant, and the civilization lacks the stimulus, the progressiveness, and the varied development which Christianity gives, and becomes stagnant and monotonous.

Further, the freedom and flexibility and individuality involved in this method are elements of power. "A system which raises the individual to the primary place of religious importance, places him nearest to the supernatural energy of God..... naturally draws to it minds of marked vigor and trains men in self-subsisting habits." It develops the individual. It inspires him. It works towards the realization of the wish" that all the Lord's people were prophets." It shows its power, not in producing a perfect mechanism directed by one engineer, but in multiplying strong and earnest Christians. And it produces unity of action, not by the mechanical unity of organization, but creating a type of man-men and women acting individually, spontaneously, and earnestly, yet by the formative power of common convictions, and common faith and love, made of one type, so that spontaneous working is working in a spontaneous harmony for one result. Puritanism and Methodism each creates its type

of man. The religion and education of New England have produced a type of man. Plant New Englanders anywhere on the face of the earth and they spontaneously reproduce New England institutions. Such is the action of Christianity. It creates a type of man. Christians of whatever age or country understand each other, and sympathize in the deepest experience and most cherished aim of life. Their real unity is here, and not in the unity of organization. Thus the church is efficient, because it is alive in every part, and

"Vital in every part,

Cannot but by annihilating die."

When any organization passes away, this deathless and allpervading energy embodies itself anew and works out its great result. Such was the ancient prophecy: "The Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion and upon her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night."

ARTICLE VI.

THE THREE FUNDAMENTAL METHODS OF PREACHING. THE PUBLIC READING OF SERMONS, AND THE PREACHING OF THEM MEMORITER.

BY EDWARDS A. PARK.

[Continued from Vol. xxviii. p. 739.]

§ 3. The Reading of Sermons in the Pulpit.

THE plan of elaborate writing; as recommended in a preceding Section,1 implies that the majority of a preacher's discourses should be delivered extempore. Comparatively few of his sermons will be written. The fact that these are written, however, does not necessarily imply that they are to be read. Not all of them should be. In one of his familiar conversations Mr. Choate remarked: "There is an anecdote of Hamilton, illustrating what I have said of the value of writing as a preparative, in respect to full and deep thought. Hamilton made the greatest argument ever uttered in this country. It was on the law of libel, and by it he stamped upon the mind of this country the principle that in an action for libel the truth, if uttered without malice, was a justification. Upon the night previous to the argument he wrote out every word of it; then he tore it up. He was by writing fully prepared; it lay very fully in his mind; and, not to be cramped and fettered by a precise verbal exactness, he tore it to pieces. Then he spoke and conquered."2 Several ministers of the gospel have adopted a similar course with their written sermons. They acted on the theory that all their words in the pulpit should be spoken rather than read. Does this theory admit no exceptions?

12. 1. All the references in this Article to the preceding Articles of this Series are to the Divisions, not the pages.

* Parker's Reminiscences, pp. 252, 253.

I. The reading of an entire sermon, or of parts of a sermon, in the pulpit, should not be indiscriminately condemned. 1. The prospect of preaching an entire discourse from manuscript is an incentive to the careful writing of it. The plan of repeating it memoriter, or of giving it to the press, may be an equal incentive, but in our country, at least, is not so common. On this topic we will assume, for the sake of convenience, that the minister intends to make the most of himself in every sermon which he writes. -to task upon it his intellectual and moral powers. His strength comes from his effort to do justice to a great truth. This effort is expended in selecting the best thoughts, arranging them in the best method, and expressing them in the best words. If he expect to utter these words and thoughts as they are adjusted in his study, he will labor to have them just what they should be. If he expect to utter only the substance, and not the words of what he writes, he will defer the perfecting of it until he feels the inspiration of the pulpit. He will not do to-day what he hopes to do better to-morrow. Therefore he jots down rough hints of his ideas, arranges them in an inapposite order, and clothes them in a slovenly attire. He loses, or never gains, the habit of careful writing. It may be that his discourse will have some grand features; but it will be like the statues of Michael Angelo left unfinished. We read of a sculptor elaborating the top and back of the head of a statue which was to adorn the summit of a temple, and when asked why he was so punctilious in finishing the parts which no man would ever see, he replied: "The gods will see them." Some ministers may be thus conscientious in perfecting what they compose for the sake of the perfection itself; but others need the stimulus of popular criticism to make them careful. They will write loosely, unless they measure their thoughts and words by the standard which they will be expected to reach. Indolence and procrastination must be resisted by various kinds of motive. Nature must become an aid to grace. A good man may be en1 See § 2. 1 above.