Puritan Rec., April 15, '52. If a preacher maintains perpetual silence, touching the great doctrines of grace, he frustrates the great end of preaching, though all the while he is giving utterance to many beautiful and important sentiments. He may utter moving exhortations, thrilling appeals to the passions, melting strains of sentimentalism, moral portraits of masterly aptness and beauty, narratives of breathless interest, and not utter a single untruth, nor violate the decorum of the pulpit. And yet, by his omissions, he takes the most effectual way to carry the minds and hearts of his hearers away from Christianity. His omissions, connected with his splendid, but empty show of a living Gospel, do the work of a skilful corrupter of the truth. And his rhetorical beauties and pathos, spent upon the incidentals of Christianity, will only lead to bewilder, and dazzle to blind. Such a silence, touching the Divinity and atonement of Christ, or the sovereignty of God's grace, and the great truths that have their centre in these, is all that an enemy could ask, in the way of preaching down these truths. It is the only way, by which a preacher can come into an orthodox congregation, and carry them over quietly and effectually to "another Gospel, which is not another."

Cor. N. Y. Ob. It should be the design of the American Tract Society, to exclude the characteristic sentiments of every body of evangelical Christians. Ed. What will be the character of what would remain, should this be thoroughly done? [See 634.]

639. NEW ENGLAND.

and

New England, the cradle of intelligent piety, thought, and contrivance. Her sons, daughters, manufactures, commerce, influences, have had a remarkable quality of diffusion.

Ed. New England. Three kingdoms were sifted to plant her. Persecution for righteousness' sake, was employed to rally and drive her planters hither. A thin, sandy, or stony and hilly soil was appointed for their domain, that luxury might not ruin them. All things were ordered by Providence to prevent their moral and religious declension; to make them prize their principles, their liberties, their home, and their privileges; and to desire

NEWSPAPERS, NONCONFORMITY.

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to have them conveyed both to their immediate and remote posterity. [See 428, 696, 774.]

640. NEWSPAPERS.

Ed. Newspapers should not be news makers, but news carriers. There is truth and entertainment enough to print, without fiction; and those editors who publish the latter, betray their lack of the former.

lb. Every newspaper should have a responsible editor or foreman, who may be called to account for his children that he sends abroad, asking for popular attention and regard.

Ib. Every newspaper should have its name, number, date, and day on the top of each page, lest insulted time should bring an action for detention. Why should we be obliged to fumble over papers in search of names, dates, and numbers, when it costs publishers nothing to insert them conspicuously on every page, for their hundreds and thousands of readers.

lb. Every editor should be careful to add the name of the country, state, county, place, time, and other incidents, necessary to give accidental, and not well-informed readers, a ready apprehension of communications. For the want of an explanatory or additional name or word, why should the multitude of readers, and especially accidental readers, be kept in a painful quandary during the perusal of communications, and not be able to understand them at last?

641. NONCONFORMITY.

Em. The less Christians conform to the world, the more the world will conform to them. This has been visibly and astonishingly manifested, through all the Christian world. Though Christians have been a small minority, yet they have had a most happy and controlling influence over the men of the world. They have kept up Christian institutions, and these have a universal and restraining influence over the world that lieth in wickedness.

Ed. Some sects of Pietists, philosophers, and religionists have made outward non-conformity to the world the fundamental test of devotion to the kingdom of heaven. But with the spirit of the world in their hearts, such professed religionists and singu

lar philosophers have found it difficult to maintain their nonconformity to the world through life, and through successive generations of their followers. Conformity to the world comes along, with the lapse of time, and their own test condemns them. 642. NOTHING.

As well do nothing, as to do to no purpose.

Ed. He who runs after a shadow has a wearisome race, and he who works at nothing, has no resting-place.

N. Howe. The way to be nothing, is to do nothing.

Ed. The following "Poetical effusion on nothing," by Tho.
Wms., was probably intended as a satire upon skepticism.
I see the earth; I feel the air;
How good is every nothing;
I see the light; I feel the fire;
How glad am I for nothing!

My wife, my dear, how fair you seem;
Since we have come to nothing;
And are our children but a dream?
What pretty things for nothing!

Nor care, nor pain, nor sickness, now,
Can ever trouble nothing,

Nor death itself can touch our brow,
Since everything is nothing.

Our health, and life, and all our friends,

Now also come to nought;

Nor God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor fiends,

Are worth a moment's thought.

How happy, happy, now I am!

O blessed, blessed nothing!

What am I then? and what's my name?

O, nothing, nothing, nothing.

The masonic lodge at Hartford, Ct., having just appointed a great pedant as master of the lodge, Dr. Strong, who had taken two or three degrees and left the lodge, on being informed of the appointment of the master, remarked, that "he is the best man I know of, to give dignity to nothing."

NOTHINGARIAN LECTURERS, RAILERS, ETC.

377

643. NOTHINGARIAN LECTURERS, RAILERS, ETC. Jude. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

Emerson, R. W. I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly, that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been, from my very incapacity of methodical writing, a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,-lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and minds of society, to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position; for I well know, that there is no scholar less willing, or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments,' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not know what arguments mean, in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis against all comers.

Ed. (Ironical.) Everythingarian and Nothingarian Lecturers, who happen to have wit, sarcasm, buffoonery, envy, and hatred enough to attack somethingarianism with spirit, are the speakers we want, to give tone to our literature, and the reformers we want, to shape our morals and manners. Let us

not fail to employ, and pay, and hear, and clap them, lest we and

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NOVELS, NOVELTY, NOW OR NEVER, OATHS.

our children should be tempted to seek still worse amusements. At all events, let them have the Lyceum appointments. (Aside.) "O, shame, where is thy blush."

A superficial lady, having heard a miserable declaimer preach, said to Dr. Bellamy, "O, I have been fed this evening." The Doctor replied, "So the calves appear to think, after sucking ears."

644. NOVELS.

Varle. Novels are mean imitations of literature, and usually the poorest part of it. They devour much precious time, and what is worse, have a bad effect upon mind and morals. Their fanciful, distorted and exaggerated sketches of life tend to vitiate and corrupt the taste.

Beattie. Novel reading tends to destroy a relish for history, philosophy, and other useful knowledge. Novels give false notions of life, which are dangerous and injurious.

Novels vitiate the taste, as strong drink vitiates the stomach, and injures the constitution.

545. NOVELTY.

Ed. Many modern preachers, who are either unable or unwilling to gain public attention to their discourses by clear illustrations of sublime truths, endeavor to gain it by some novel device, like the Scotch preacher, who took a text, and told his people, "I shall, first, dwell upon things that I know, and that you know, and that every body else knows. Second, I shall treat upon things that I know, but which you don't know. And third, I shall tell you about things that I don't know, and that you don't know, and what nobody else don't know." The novelty of the modern pulpit, and religious press, are very mischievous devices of the adversary.

646. NOW, OR NEVER.

Now is the constant syllable ticking from the clock of time; Now is the watchword of the wise; the banner of the prudent. Ed. Now or never is the chorus of all the tunes of time. 647. OATHS.

Oaths commonly discredit the truths they affirm.

Ed.

Profane oaths may be forgotten for a time, but their