plausible, insidious, and cameleon sin of selfishness. They regard this high and spiritual office too much in the light of worldly respectability: it will, they imagine, set them on an eminence above the majority of their fellow creatures; it will release them from the low drudgery of manual labours and secular pursuits, and place them in comparatively competent and easy circumstances; it will introduce them to the superior circles of society; and it will give them opportunity and scope for exercising and displaying their acquirements and talents before the public! Now, where these views and aims are really entertained and nourished, they cannot fail to be productive of the most serious and injurious results: they will impart their own character and features to the whole conduct and ministrations of those who indulge them; and from thence they will reach and exert their baneful influence on the minds of their hearers. Do they, for example, consider the ministerial office as clothed with worldly respectability and advantages? Then, it is more than probable, the poor of their flock will be slighted and overlooked, while the more wealthy and respectable will be visited and fawned upon! Are they apparently earnest and zealous in their efforts both in and out of the pulpit? one eye at least will be steadily fixed on the increased grist they hope to bring to their mill! Does another church hold up to them a purse containing a little more of the precious white and yellow dust than the one furnished by the people of their present charge? A removal is almost certain ! Do they regard the pulpit as a stage, where self is to be exhibited and regaled with the incense of human applause? Then all their preparations for that theatre must have an aspect and direction towards these interesting and absorbing objects. Authors of the most eloquent, classic,

and finished style must be read and studied "for the sake of their style," to the almost entire neglect of others of an infinitely more valuable character. Their sermons must consist of so many principal and sub-divisions; every sentence must be carefully weighed, pruned, balanced, and rendered smooth and harmonious. And then, the whole de meanour in the pulpit must, if possible, be in keeping with what has preceded it, with what accompanies it, and with what is to follow it. And, oh! if the affair should succeed-if the thing goes off well-if one of these orators should learn that his audience admired and applauded his beautiful and eloquent discourse, how happy, how elated, how contented he is! And all this independently, or nearly so, of the all-important question, "Has a soul been converted to God? Has the ignorant been instructed? Has a broken heart been healed and bound up?" Would it not be an insult to reason and to God, to suppose that he will sanction and bless such acting and by-aims as these } Whatever may be the devotion, the zeal, and even the prayers of such ministers, we believe that God will blow upon their work! Certainly, nothing can be of greater importance to the success of a preached gospel, than right, and pure, and heavenly aims and motives in those who preach it.

III. The want of due and right preparation for the pulpit. If any work requires diligent, careful, accurate, and earnest preparation, it is surely that of preaching "the everlasting gospel" to the crring and ruined children of men. Without this a minister may succeed for a time in collecting and pleasing a congregation; but it will not, and cannot be for long. He will soon become wandering, uncertain, extravagant, and repetitious pacing and beating perpetually over the same ground; and this will never long edify or satisfy

the same congregation. If any work requires to be done well and as it ought to be, it is that of the ministry of divine truth-a work which has to do directly and for ever with God, with a minister's own soul, and with the souls of his hearers. What, then, is the kind, and the best kind of preparation for this work? By no means would we underrate a literary, logical, analytical, and purely intellectual preparation; for he who neglects it is sure, in a little time, to become unacceptable and offensive to the reading and thinking portion of his hearers, and so far defeat the success of his ministry. Nor can he long maintain his standing without this kind of preparation, unless he be a man of extraordinary native talents and genius. But this, after all, is by no means the most important and essential kind of preparation for preaching the gospel with success, much less is it the only necessary one. In the first place of all, the heart must be brought into a right state towards both God and man. On the one hand, it must be divested of pride and vanity, of selfishness and the fear of man; and on the other, it must be replenished and imbued with the fear and love of God, and with Christ-like tenderness and compassion for the souls of men. This

will give a zest, an earnestness, a vitality and power to the ministration of the truth which nothing else can, and which nothing can well resist. It will make the pulpit such a glowing scene of light and living power, as is nowhere else to be seen on earth, but which is every way befitting the delivery of a message from "the living God" to ruined but rebellious man! Not all the learning, and logic, and eloquence in the world can supply its place. Without it, they will be as powerless over the human heart as the mere prattle and breath of an infant over a mighty tempest. We need hardly say

that this preparation of the heart can only be attained by devout meditation, sacred familiarity with divine revelation, constant communion with God, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Never ought ministers, above all men, to forget the inspired declaration, "The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, are from the Lord.” But have we not too much reason to fear that the want of this kind of preparation lies and eats like a canker-worm at the root of our ministerial labours? The writer of this paper candidly confesses that no one has deeper cause for lamentation and shame on this head than himself! Another essential part of effective preparation lies in the habit of diligently, freely, and directly collecting our sentiments, ideas, and illustrations from the word of God itself. We say nothing against the moderate use of human authors, for the purposes of elucidating and illustrating the historical, prophetic, and preceptive portions of the sacred volume; but we think it is quite possible, and too common, to make too much use of them in preparing for the pulpit. We often spend, it is to be feared, more time in consulting and collecting from them, than we do in studying and gathering treasures from the divine oracles themselves. The consequences are, that our views of truth often become dim and confused, the spirituality of our minds impaired, and our thoughts and heart too much humanized. As for the practice of making use of other men's compositions and plans of sermons, we know not how sufficiently to express our contempt and abhorrence of it. How should we laugh at and despise the vain or the crafty wretch who should once a week dexterously steal the dress of his more wealthy and fashionable neighbour, put it on, and then strut and swell about the streets and market in it, as though it was his

own! How should we scorn, and pity, and condemn the fool we saw constantly hobbling along our streets on crutches, who we knew could walk and run without them as well as ourselves, would he but use the strength and limbs which God has given him! And do we not here see a picture, though a faint one, of the vanity, or cunning, and degradation of that professed minis-, ter of Jesus Christ, who, from sabbath to sabbath arrays himself out in the mental attire of some other man; or who leans upon the crutches, or stalks on the stilts he has purchased at the shop of Simeon, or Hannah, or Burns and Co. ? And can it in reason and justice be pleaded that these means are really necessary to any one whom the great Head of the church has called to the ministry of his word? We firmly believe it cannot. Surely there are materials enough in the word of God; for that is an inexhaustible mine. The riches of Christ, which he is to preach, are "unsearchable riches." The Holy Spirit which Christ has promised, for the purpose of aiding his servants and giving success to their labours, is, for the variety, and fulness, and all-sufficiency of his gifts and illuminations, !

compared to "seven golden lamps before the throne of God." All then that can be necessary is for us to dig into these mines-to gather up a little of these boundless treasures-and earnestly to seek, and then open our hearts to the reception of, the promised Spirit of light and power. Of the kind of preparation we are enforcing we have a glorious specimen in the first preachers of the gospel. Wherever they went it was "in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ." When they preached, the word reached their hearers, "not in word only, but in power, in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." And to thousands both of malignant Jews and of degraded Gentiles did that word become "the power of God unto salvation." In later times we are furnished with the fine and instructive examples of such men as John Bunyan and Richard Baxter, the secret of whose success lay rather in "the preparation of the heart," than of the head.

"I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men."

Barter.

A WARWICKSHIRE PASTOR.

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Being a man of ingenuous and pious¦ mind, he set himself to ascertain what was the religion it was his duty to embrace; instead of contenting himself, as one more indifferent on the subject, would have done, with adhering to the church (the Greek) in which he happened to have been brought up.