not belong to you, in exhorting a public congregation. I know you to be a person of good judgment and discretion, and therefore can with the greater confidence put it to you to consider with yourself what you can reasonably judge would be the consequence, if I and all other ministers should approve and publicly justify such things as laymen's taking it upon them to exhort after this manner? If one may, why may not another? And if there be no certain limits or bounds, but every one that pleases may have liberty, alas! what should we soon come to? If God had not seen it necessary that such things should have certain limits and bounds, he never would have appointed a certain particular order of men to that work and office, to be set apart to it in so solemn a manner, in the name of God: the Head of the church is wiser than we, and knew how to regulate things in his church.

""Tis no argument that such things are right, that they do a great deal of good for the present, and within a narrow sphere; when, at the same time, if we look on them in the utmost extent of their consequences, and on the long run of events, they do ten times as much hurt as good. Appearing events are not our rule, but the law and the testimony. We ought to be vigilant and circumspect, and look on every side, and, as far as we can, to the further end of things. God may if he pleases, in his sovereign providence, turn that which is most wrong to do a great deal of good for the present; for he does what he pleases. I hope you will consider the matter, and for the future avoid doing thus. You ought to do what good you can, by private, brotherly, humble admonitions and counsels; but 'tis too much for you to exhort public congregations, or solemnly to set yourself, by a set speech, to counsel a room full of people, unless it be children, or those that are much your inferiors, or to speak to any in an authoritative way. Such things have done a vast deal of mischief in the country, and have hindered the work of God exceedingly. Mr. Tennent has lately wrote a letter to one of the ministers of NewEngland, earnestly to dissuade from such things. Your temptations are exceeding great: you had need to have the prudence and humility of ten If you are kept humble and prudent, you may be a great blessing in this part of the land, otherwise you may do as much hurt in a few weeks as you can do good in four years. You might be under great advantage by your prudence to prevent those irregularities and disorders in your parts, that prevail and greatly hinder the work of God in other parts of the country; but by such things as these you will weaken your own hands, and fill the country with nothing but vain and fruitless and pernicious disputes. Persons when very full of a great sense of things are greatly exposed; for then they long to do something, and to do something extraordinary; and then is the devil's time to keep them upon their heads, if they be not uncommonly circumspect and self-diffident.

men.

"I hope these lines will be taken in good part, from your assured friend, JONATHAN EDWARDS."

There is no doubt that there are evils connected with lay-exhortation and lay-preaching. The following narrative intimates the mischief which may attend the practices, and also gives evidences that the practices were occasionally adopted by our Puritan fathers. It is taken from the seventh chapter of Captain Edward Johnson's quaint History, entitled: "WonderWorking Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England.”

In describing the town of Malden he says: "The people gathered into a church some distance of time before they could attain to any churchofficer to administer the seals unto them; yet in the meantime, at their Sabbath assemblies they had a godly Christian, named Mr. Sarjant, who did preach the word unto them; and afterwards they were supplied, at times, with some young students from the College, till the year 1650 One Mr. Marmaduke Mathews, coming out of Plymouth Patten, was for some space of time with a people at the town of Hull, which is a small port town, peopled by fishermen, and lies at the entrance of the bay's mouth, where this Mr. Mathews continued preaching till he lost the approbation of some able understanding men among both magistrates and ministers, by weak and unsafe expressions in his teaching" (p. 211).

It is an interesting fact, that while one class of philanthropists regard lay-exhortation or lay-preaching as an evil to which the church cannot wisely submit, and a second class regard it as attended with some mischiefs which ought to be endured on account of the existing deficiency of well-educated ministers, a third and intelligent class regard it as decidedly superior to clerical exhortation in its fitness to reform the more degraded portion of the populace. A careful observer describing an enterprise designed for the elevation of certain vicious men, writes: "When the wellintended ministrations of the attendant clergymen had failed to produce any effect, the voluntary prayer of a rough man, apparently a sailor, made a great impression on his hearers. This can be easily understood, and should afford a hint to those engaged in the work of reform. It would be a great mistake to pelt with epithets the poor people gathered together at such times; to mouth over the assurances of their sinful condition; to call them "dear brethren " with the nice manner of the fashionable pulpit; to utter the denunciations or encouragements with which the polite followers of religion are alarmed or.comforted. Even as poets are said " to learn in suffering what they teach in song," so persons of strong and simple humanity would be best adapted to the duty of enlightening those poor degraded sinners. It would require a sure and tender skill to reach the nature so long overlaid by pollution; to touch the instincts of good that vice and debauchery may not altogether have exhausted; and the least affectation, or any prudery of instruction, would at once repel and bewilder feeble souls, all astray and groping toward the light."

ARTICLE V.

THE DECLINE OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

BY REV. JAMES H. FAIRCHILD, PRESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE.

RELIGION, as a human experience, involves three elements the intellectual, the emotional, and the ethical. We must have, first, the rational apprehension of God-the great facts of his being and government; next, the emotions which these facts excite the awe, the reverence, the fear, or hope which these great objects of religious thought inspire, often called religious sentiment; and lastly, the moral attitude and action which the facts require the adjustment of character and life to the truths of religion as intellectually apprehended.

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These elements of religious experience exist, in constantly varying proportions, both in the individual and in the community, the nation or the race. In some form or degree, they are all essential to the existence of religion as a genuine experience; but the same individual, in different stages of his progress, may exhibit different degrees and combinations of religious thought and feeling and ethical action. At one time he passes through a period of special intellectual activity, in which the thought is directed to the truths pertaining to God-his nature and government and providence

a period of earnest thinking, in which the foundations are laid in religious doctrine. Again, these facts act profoundly upon the feelings, and call forth the intense emotions which it is their nature to awaken; and then, again, the obligations and requirements of religion address themselves to the soul, and the character and the life are brought into harmony with the facts. The last result is, of course, the proper outcome of all thinking and feeling in connection with religion. Nothing that is ultimately salutary and

valuable has been accomplished until religion reaches and moulds the character and life. Where this is attained, religion is a success; where it is not, it is a failure. The thinking and feeling are, however, necessary steps in the process; because through these come all the motives to action, all the objects upon which the activity can terminate. Similar fluctuations are exhibited in communities, as in individuals. We sometimes come upon a period of religious thinking - a theological era, when the general mind is turned in the direction of the objects of faith, traversing the field of religious thought, defining more accurately the old, and bringing out the new, and extending the limits of religious knowledge. Again, we may have a general awakening of religious feeling, a quickening of the religious sentiment -the result of progress in religious thinking, of the apprehension of some new and moving truth, or a freshening of the old, or the consequence of providential events that touch the hearts of men, or, at times, doubtless, the work of a special dispensation of the Divine Spirit, of which no outward occasion appears. At such times, the entire people seem susceptible to religious impressions; the emotional element is prevalent and pervading, and all religious movements present the feature of intensity. Then, again, the idea of duty becomes prominent, and religious activity takes the direction of bringing the life into harmony with the claims of morality. New light has brought out new duties, or old wrongs, and the entire people are aroused to the necessity of a higher standard of living, a more complete adjustment of character to perceived obligation. Towards one or another of these three modes of action there is a frequent tendency in every religious community. A general quickening of the religious sensibility is popularly called a revival of religion. A general movement in either of the other directions might properly bear the same name. It is not the sincerely and truly religious alone who are concerned in these movements. The religious tendencies of men are such that even those in whom religion is not the controlling

principle are drifted on with the tide of religious life, and share in the general thought and feeling and action.

The true ideal condition of the individual soul, and of the community at large, is a symmetrical blending of these three elements- a clear apprehension of the great facts of the spiritual world, an appreciation of these facts in the sensibility, and a life and action corresponding with them. Towards this ideal we must suppose that the entire movement tends, and the perfection of the life of heaven involves its complete attainment; but historically the experience of mankind has not exhibited this symmetrical combination.

Religious progress has often been partial, bringing first one, and then another, element into prominence, and concentrating upon it the energies of the community. Or, again, there has seemed to be a division of labor; the work of elaborating religious truth falling upon one portion of the community; another portion living and working in the line of feeling, furnishing the emotional impulse required; and still another giving itself to bring up the standard of the moral life. Doubtless such a distribution of labor has, to some extent, always existed, and perhaps a reasonable blending of these three operations is the best we can expect, in a world of imperfect religious development. But a marked deficiency or failure in either of these elements should awaken concern and counteracting effort.

From the nature of the case, there seems more reason to apprehend a failure of religious sentiment than of religious thought; doctrinal thought being naturally the more permanent of the two. Truth once attained is not easily lost; it takes permanent and, so to speak, tangible form in the symbols and literature of the church and the world. It may cease to attract attention, and may become in some sense inoperative; but let the emergency arise which calls for the truth, and it becomes at once available. Feeling, on the other hand, is more evanescent, although some degree of it is provided for in the permanent constitution of man. This