themselves, or more important to be observed; and yet none, perhaps, have been more frequently or grossly violated by many portions of the visible church in all ages of the world.

2. In the second place, and as a direct result of what goes before, let the church cleave closer and closer to the word of God, and more and more eagerly spread the knowledge of it among men. The gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; and it is the very end of the existence of the church that men may be lieve, and that believing they may have eternal life. Besides all this, let her bear in mind these further truths: 1. That we, as a great department of the kingdom of God, have no other plea to offer to mankind but the simple necessity and power of godliness. We have neither rites nor ceremonies by means of which to proclaim an exclusive salvation. We have no special forms by virtue of which we are able to assure men of the safety of their souls. All we have to offer is Christ, and him crucified. Therefore let us offer him with an earnestness at least equal to that with which substitutes for his blood are pressed upon the acceptance of men. 2. This word of God, to which we ought thus to cleave, besides being able to save men's souls, is able, moreover, and it alone is able, to restore and to sustain that moral and intellectual unity of the human race, the loss of which is the source of such innumerable miseries and such boundless degradation, and the recovery of which will be fraught with such incalculable results. 3. It is upon this very Bible that the main pillar of all that is good and great rests, in the very scene in which our whole destiny is cast. An open Bible and free institutions are the elemental principles of our whole American dispensation. To lift on high that open Bible-to bear it aloft throughout this vast continent and amid all its diversified populations-this is the grand portion of our mission which those free institutions enable us to perform.

3. In the third place, and also as an immediate consequence of all that has been said, let the church more and more eliminate from her bosom, every thing for which she can not produce a clear warrant from God. The Lord did not call her to be his counselor; he sent her forth to observe and to teach his truth-to obey and to execute his commandments. The very conception of a divine revelation is as positive in what it excludes as in what it embraces; and if God's sacred word be a perfect rule of faith and duty-which is the ultimate truth upon which Protestantism rests, then we must not only go wherever that rule goes, but we must stop wherever that rule stops. If our faith and our duty as Christians rest exclusively upon an inspired Christian record, then, manifestly, to extend either the faith or the duty beyond the record, is not only to impeach the sufficiency of the record and the character of the. God who gave it, but is also recklessly to incur the extreme peril, if not to insure the absolute certainty of perverting, by our carnal addi tions, the very substance of that which lies at the foundation of all our

divine knowledge and all our eternal hopes. Nor can we form any idea of the perfect headship of Christ over his church, which does not exclude every authority but that of Christ from the faith and the obedience of his people; nor can we have any conception of the perfect freedom of the church, except one which involves on the one side a perfect consecration to Christ and a perfect conformity to his will, and on the other a complete deliverance from every authority but his in all divine things. I speak not now of the sacred rights of private judgment and individual conscience; I speak of the church of Jesus Christ, and of the transcendant obligation resting on her, that she add nothing to the revealed will of God, and that she take nothing from it.

4. In the fourth place, and as a necessary corollary from the three preceding propositions, as well as a most express duty clearly commanded by God, let the church discriminate more and more carefully among those who profess to be the disciples of the Lord. Having done so, her opposition to all the corrupters of the gospel ought to be most steady and emphatic; while she ought to cherish and trust as brethren and fellow heirs of the common salvation, all who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity and truth. Union among all true Christians-unity among all true Presbyterians-are among the clearest necessities of the times in which we live—a union and a unity prompted by every feeling of the renewed soul, and urgently demanded of us all, for the very purpose of enabling every follower of Christ to execute with greater certainty and power his part of the work required of us all. The capacity of any particular generation to perfect this union among all true Christians, and this unity among the scattered members of any particular branch of the family of Christ, depends altogether upon the depth and purity of the faith of the generation itself. When men are thoroughly like Christ, they also thoroughly resemble each other; when they love him supremely, they can not avoid loving each other tenderly and longing for mutual fellowship. But any alliance of light with darkness is in its own nature impossible; and all carnal attempts to unite the children of God with the corrupters of his truth, upon the pretext that they all call themselves Christians, or even all call themselves Presbyterians, are obliged to begin in the betrayal of faith, and end in the sacrifice of godliness. It is not by striving to be conformed to each other that either men or sects can be united in Christ; but it is by exalting Christ, and exalting the truth whereby we are conformed unto Christ, that all who are fit for Christian union or Christian unity develop at the same moment their mutual assimilation and their mutual love. So that both the capacity and the desire of the church to perform this duty, on the one side and the other, are constant tests of her own progress, infallible proofs of her true condition.

5. In the fifth place, and as the conclusion of the whole, let the church, thoroughly comprehending and joyfully admitting that she is

not the whole body of Christ, realize completely her own mission, in her own lot, in the peculiar time of her present call to the kingdom. There is a mission and a lot common to the whole church of God; but there is, besides, a mission and a lot peculiar to every part of the redeemed host; and, among the rest, a mission and a lot for our Presbyterian church in the United States. Where the truth of God is most pressed and imperiled-there is her place. Where the battle rages most fiercely, there men look for her banner. Where the enemies of God thirst most ravenously for Christian blood, there let her be ready to offer her own freely for Christ's sake. Thus has the mission of our fathers been always. Thus is our mission to-day. Thus will be the mission of our true successors to the end of time. We are not called to enjoy honor and repose; we are called to fight the good fight of faith. And if we would win eternal life, we must fight it to the end. Why, then, should not the church consecrate herself absolutely, and without reserve, to her Master and her work? She knows what it is, and she knows who set her on it. Behold the immense resources which he has put at her disposal! What an army of ministers! what an array of congregations! what a host of private Christians! So much knowledge and light; so much power and wealth; such a theater; such opportunities; such motives! What hinders but that she take the lead? Ah! now for the heart; now for the spirit; now for the burning love, the consuming zeal! And now for the curse of Meroz upon every one who will not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty!

V. Fathers and brethren, I have spoken but the more freely because the entire habits of our church, as well as many things personal to myself, admonish me that the duty will no more devolve on me to plead with you from this position, and upon this aspect, of this great subject. Bear with me, therefore, while I finish this testimony with one remaining word of still greater freedom.

I know this church well. I have known it long. From my youth up I have sat under the shadow of her altars, where my fathers had worshiped for many generations; and for five-and-twenty years I have gone in and out in the presence of her great assemblies. I have sat, from my childhood, at the feet of the great leaders among us; and have seen them, one by one, pass away, and others raised up by God to sit in their vacant seats. Things were not always as we see them now. I have seen this church on the very brink of ruin. I now behold it in abounding prosperity. I have seen the hand of God deliver this church when the help of man had failed. And the same mighty hand conducts her still, along her glorious way. To-day a purer, more united, more power ful church exists not on earth. All the efforts she ever made are as nothing beside the efforts she can make now; all the triumphs she ever won, are but intimations of the triumphs she is now capable of winning

This is the condition in which you receive this church from the hands of those who are rapidly sinking into the grave. They did not rece.ve it in this condition. I see in the midst of you, here and there, the relics of another age. They know full well that you receive this church in a widely different state from that in which we received it from those who went before. They know better than you can ever know, that we deliver it over to you far otherwise than it was delivered to us. Think you it was through sloth and cowardice-time-serving and self-seekingtemporizing and conformities-the devices of men and distrust of God -the love of the world and indifference to God's truth-that so great a change was wrought, such mighty works done? Think ye, verily, in your hearts, that such results follow such causes?

I speak to you in the name of the great dead, whose ashes as yet are hardly cold. I beseech you, in the name of the scattered remnant whom the inexorable stroke of death still respects. I charge you in the name of our covenanted God-our Saviour and yours. See that ye keep this great church steadily on her great career. See that ye conduct her steps in the fear and the power of God. See that ye transmit to those who will follow you, her name untarnished, her garments unstained, her faith unpolluted. I call yourselves to witness-I appeal to posterity to judge between us-I invoke our common Lord and Master to take note, that ye receive it a glorious and a blessed church, in the midst of which Christ dwells-and that ye are bound to deliver it up in like estate when your warfare is accomplished. It is not that I distrust you that I speak thus; for I do not. It is because I know that great prosperity is full of great perils, and that the good of my country, the salvation of my race, and the glory of my Saviour, are deeply staked on the fidelity of this church, and of you into whose hands her guidance is now come of God, for such a time as this.

To eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God; to receive a crown of life, and to be out of the reach of the second death; to eat of the hidden manna, and to receive a white stone, with the new name; to take power over the nations, and rule them with a rod of iron; to have a name written in the book of life, and openly confessed by Christ before his Father; to be a pillar in the temple of God, and to have the name of God, and the name of the city of God, and the new name of the Son of God written thereon; to sit down with the glorified Redeemer on his own throne, even as he, when he had overcome, sat down with the Father on his throne-these are the rewards of victory! Are they not ur searchable? But they are also certain and eternal !

DISCOURSE XXI.

JOHN

MCCLINTOCK, D.D.

THE Methodist Episcopal Church of America does not contain a man of greater intellectual power than the subject of this sketch. Descended from an ancestry of sound old north-of-Ireland stock, the son of a merchant who spared no pains to give him the best early advantages, endowed with a sound constitution, and renewed in heart while yet a youth, he came up with all the elements of a strong man, intc which he rapidly ripened and matured. The place of his birth (October 27th, 1814) was Philadelphia, and the date of his conversion the year 1831, when he united with the Methodist Episcopal Church in New York. His preliminary studies were pursued under Dr. Wylie, of Philadelphia, and he graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1835. He was ordained in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1837, and the same year was appointed Professor of Mathematics in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. In 1840 he took the chair of the Greek and Latin professorship; and in 1848 became editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review, of which he had the charge until 1856. He is now under appointment to visit the European Methodist churches, as delegate from the American General Conference.

In the line of authorship, Dr. McClintock has published a translation of Neander's "Life of Christ;" a series of elementary Greek and Latin books; a volume on the Temporal Power of the Pope" (N. Y., 1855); and many review articles.

The Methodist Review, under his control, took a stand, in point of sterling ability, second to no other quarterly in the country. Some of Dr. McClintock's articles would compare favorably with those from the pens of any reviewers, European or American. Indeed, we apprehend that this periodical, under his direction, was of altogether a too heavy caliber to suit the mass of its readers; and that for this reason the Doctor was not continued in the chair editorial.

Dr. McClintock is of about medium height, not stoutly built, broad and high forehead, overhung with thin, straggling hair, face flushed, and narrowing toward the chin, and small, keen, piercing eyes.

In the pulpit, his manner is animated but not boisterous, the train of thought natural and luminous, the style of expression simple, chaste, and often figurative and illustrative. His sermons are never metaphysical and abstruse, but almost always practical and highly evangelical.

We scarcely know a platform-speaker who is his equal. Perfectly composed when calm self-possession is called for, and a perfect tornado to sweep down opposition when this means will best prevail; dealing now in solid argument, now in classic allusion, now in chaste poetic quotations, and now in pathetic, or fervent, melting, glowing appeal, he holds his audience in the silence of death, and bears them whithersoever he will. An instance is fresh in mind, which occurred at the