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 PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINHRY 
 
 ppofessop flenpy von Dyke, D.D., IiIi.D. 
 
 sec 
 
BROADWAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK, 
 
 Cor. Broadway and i4th Street. 
 
SEEMo:tsrs 
 
 PKEACHED AT THE 
 
 gtiiiccitioii J3f i\}t §r0iiMi)cij] ®ciknuitle, 
 
 NEW YOEK, 
 Sunday, April 24, 1859. 
 
 I, 
 
 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 By Prof. Edwauds A. Park, D. D. 
 
 II. 
 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS THE TEMPLE 
 OF a OB. 
 
 By Richard S. Storks, Jr., D. D. 
 
 III. 
 PREACHINO THE GOSPEL THE GRAND FUNCTION 
 OF THE 3IINISTER. 
 
 By Joseph P. Thompson, D. D. 
 
 TO "wnicn are added, 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE AND A 
 FORMAL DEDICATION OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 N. A. CALKINS, 348 BEOADWAY. 
 
 1859. 
 
HISTOEICAL SKETCH. 
 
 The original Broadway Tabernacle was erected in 1836, iipou 
 a lot one hundred feet square in the rear of No. 340 Broadway, with 
 an entrance from the street at that point. It was occupied at first 
 by a free church, of the Presbyterian order; but in 1840 it passed 
 into the hands of the Broadway Tabernacle Churcii, then newly 
 organized upon Congregational principles. For twenty-one years 
 this spacious edifice provided accommodations for multitudes of young 
 men and strangers desiring to hear the gospel, and for the great 
 convocations of Christians during the Anniversary week, and on 
 kindred occasions. But the encroachments of business compelling 
 families -to remove up town, made it difficult, if not impossible, longer 
 to sustain a church in that locality; and in 1857 the Tabernacle was 
 sold, and the last religious service was held within its walls on the 
 26th of April in that year. 
 
 A site was selected for the new Tabernacle at the intersection 
 of Broadway, Sixth avenue, and Thirty-fourth sti-eet, nearly three 
 miles north of the old location, and the building was completed in 
 April, 1859. It would be difficult to. find in the 'city a more con- 
 spicuous site for a public edifice. The Tabernacle faces the Sixth 
 avenue, which Broadway here crosses diagonally. It is built upon 
 a lot which measures 100 feet on the avenue by 150 feet on Thirty- 
 fourth street ; and the building is 89 feet 8 inches front, and 150 deep, 
 including the chapel in the rear, which is under the same roof. The 
 main audience-room is 76 feet wide b}^ 90 feet in depth in the clear, 
 exclusive of the recess for the pulpit ; the entire length from the 
 pulpit screen to the front wall is 118 feet. 
 
 In the ground-plan of the interior the building presents a parallelo- 
 gram ; but the roof is cruciform, and the elevation of the transepts gives 
 
a pleasing variety to the exterior walls and buttresses. On the cor- 
 ner of Thirty-fourth street and the Avenue is a massive and finely- 
 proportioned tower, 135 feet in height. The side view presents 
 three tiers of windows ; the lower tier lighting the aisles, the second 
 the galleries, and the third forming the clear-story of the nave. 
 The variety in these windows has a good efiect in the external view 
 The several heights of the building outside are, 32 feet to the top 
 of the aisle walls, 64 feet to the top of the nave — the clear-story 
 rising 32 feet above the aisles — and 88 feet to the ridge of the roof. 
 The transept walls are carried up to a line with the ridge ; these 
 have a lower tier of three windows, and a great triple-window above. 
 Directly in the rear of the transept wall, the wall of the chapel rises 
 to the same elevation with that of the aisles, and above this again is 
 seen the clear-story, which here forms an apsis, in the rear of the 
 pulpit, over the chapel; The interior effect of this is quite striking 
 — presenting an arched ceiling 150 feet long, at an elevation of nearly 
 70 feet from the floor of the church. 
 
 The style of the building is perpendicular Gothic, carried out 
 with a chaste and almost severe simplicity, which imparts an air of 
 grandeur and beauty to the whole structure. The interior effect is 
 rich and imposing. Entering from the Avenue, one sees before him 
 a nave 90 feet in length, 31: feet wide, and nearly 70 feet high 
 — a large church of itself. At the extremity of this is the pulpit 
 recess ; behind the pulpit, at an elevation of 20 feet, is the choir 
 gallery, containing the small organ for choir accompaniments ; and 
 above and beyond this is the great organ, filling a large part of the 
 space over the social rooms, which are above the lectui-e-room, in the 
 second story of the chapel. Through the rich oak-hued case of the 
 organ, there are glimpses of the groined ceiling before described, 
 and the mellow tints of the clear-story windows above the chapel. 
 Standing at the door of the nave, one is struck with the perfect pro- 
 portions of the house, the admirable simplicity and taste in its 
 details, and the solidity of the whole structure. On either side of 
 the nave, supporting the pointed arches of the clear-story, are three 
 finely-shaped pillars of cream-colored stone from the New Brunswick 
 quarries. Beyond the pillars on either side, is an aisle — in the 
 architectural sense — 32 feet in height, divided by a gallery which 
 extends the entire length of the building. At a distance of 50 feet 
 down the nave, the transepts intersect it with arches 70 feet high 
 and 34 feet wide, and heighten the beauty of the building with their 
 lofty triple windows. Both on the ground floor and in the gallery 
 
these transepts furnish some of the most agreeable sittings in the 
 house. 
 
 The windows are of colored glass, so happily toned as to subdue 
 the light without making it sombre, and are free alike from grotesque 
 figures and gaudy colors. The walls are colored uniformly in drab. 
 The pews are of oak, without doors, and are finished with crimson 
 upholstery ; and the pulpit, the organ case, and the galleries corre- 
 spond with the oaken pews. There are 312 pews in the house, 212 
 on the ground floor. These are arranged in three double-blocks, 
 with an extra tier of wall-pews upon either side ; that is, there are 
 eight rows of pews the entire length of the building, divided by four 
 aisles. The front gallery, usually occupied by the choir and organ, 
 contains some of the most eligible pews in the house. It extends 
 back over the vestibule, to the front wall of the building. Each 
 gallery contains five rows of pews through its entire length. The 
 house will seat comfortably 1,600 persons. 
 
 The Tabernacle is built of Little-Falls (Jersey) rubble; the 
 dimension-stone and the porches throughout are. of cream-colored 
 New-Brunswick stone. The front porch, of this stone, is a beautiful 
 specimen of carved Gothic. The outer doors are of solid oak. There 
 are ample facilities for ingress and egress. 
 
 The lecture-room, directly in the rear of the main audience-room, 
 is 28 feet by 85 in the clear, and will seat nearly 500 per- 
 sons. This is used also as the principal Sabbath School room, the 
 seats being fitted with reversible backs. Under this is a finished 
 basement-room, with a good entrance from Thirty-fourth street ; and 
 over it is a fine suite of rooms for Bible classes, and parlors for social 
 gatherings. Here is the home of the church. 
 
 On the north side of the main building, at the angle formed with 
 it by the rear wall of the lecture-room, is a neat two story edifice for 
 the accommodation of the pastor. On the first floor is a reception- 
 room, which may also be used for inquiry meetings and for meetings 
 of church committees. This is fitted up with a wardrobe and a 
 fire-proof safe. It communicates with the lecture-room, and also 
 with the pulpit of the church, through a passage-way 8 feet by 16. 
 This passage is lighted from above, and is furnished with Croton 
 water, and gas. In the second story is the study, a beautiful room, 
 well lighted and ventilated, with ample book-shelves and closets ; 
 adjoining this, over the passage-way just mentioned, is a library, 
 neatly fitted up with book- cases, closets, and drawers, and over this 
 
6 
 
 a gallery for maps and pictures. All these apartments are for the 
 pastor's private use. 
 
 The architect of the tabernacle was Mr. Leopold Eidlitz. The 
 building was erected by Mr. Marc Eidlitz, mason, and Mr. Thomas 
 Wilson, carpenter. It was painted by Mr. L. H. Cohn ; the glass 
 was from the establishment of Mr. Henry Sharp ; the gas fixtures 
 from Haughwout & Co. ; and the organ from the factory of Mr. R. 
 M. Ferris. 
 
 The house was opened for public worship on Sabbath, April 24, 
 1859. At the morning service, after an introductory anthem by the 
 choir, appropriate selections of Scripture were read, and prayer 
 was offered by Rev. Milton Badger, D. D., Secretary of the American 
 Home Missionary Society. The following hymn was then sung by the 
 whole congregation : — 
 
 Thou, wliose own vast temple stands, 
 
 Built over earth and sea ; 
 Accept the walls that human hands 
 
 Have raised to worship thee ! 
 
 Lord, from thine inmost glory send, 
 
 Within these courts to 'bide, 
 The peace that dwelleth without end. 
 
 Serenely hy thy side. 
 
 May erring minds that worship here 
 
 Be taught the better way ; 
 And they who mourn, and they who fear, 
 
 Be strengthened as they pray. 
 
 May faith grow firm, and love grow warm. 
 
 And pure devotion rise — 
 While round these hallowed walls, the storm 
 
 Of earth-born passion dies. 
 
 The sermon was preached by Rev. Edwards A. Park, D. D., 
 Professor in Andover Theological Seminary, after which a brief his- 
 torical statement was made by the Pastor, accompanied with the 
 formal dedication of the house to the worship of Almighty God. The 
 prayer of dedication was offered by the Pastor ; after which an an- 
 them, composed by Mr. William B. Bradbury, for the following 
 words arranged by the Pastor for the occasion, was sung by a select 
 choir, under the direction of Mr. Bradbury : — 
 
Oliorus. — Arise, O Lord, into tliy rest, thou and the ark of thy strength ! Thou, 
 that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth ! 
 
 Chant Quartette. — Behold, the IMost High dwelleth not in temples made with hands'. 
 Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool. What house will ye 
 build for me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of my rest ? 
 
 Alto Solo. — I will not give sleep to mine eyes nor slumber to mine eyelids, until I 
 find out a place for the Lord — a habitation for the God of Jacob. 
 
 Chorus. — We will go into his tabernacles. We will worship at his footstool. 
 
 Quartette. — God is a spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit 
 and in truth. 
 
 Solo Soprano, repeated in Tenor. — worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. 
 
 Tenor Solo. — Blessed are they that dwell in thy house ; tliey will be still praisino- 
 thee. 
 
 £a.ts Solo. — Tliis is my rest, here will I dwell ; with Chorua — Arise, Lord, &c. 
 
 Final Chorus. — Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost ; 
 as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. — 
 Amen. 
 
 The service was concluded with the Doxology and Benediction. 
 
 In the afternoon, Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., D. D., of Brooklyn, 
 preached from 2 Cor. vi. 16. In the evening, the pastor, Rev. 
 Joseph P. Thompson, D. D., preached from 1 Cor. i. 17, 18. 
 
THE PEOMINENCE OF THE ATONEMEl^fT. 
 
 EEV. EDWAKDS A. PAKK, D.D., 
 
 PEOFESSOP. IN ANDOVEP. THEOLOGICAL SEMINAEY. 
 
SERMON 
 
 For I determined not to hnow any thing amony you., save Jesus 
 Christ, and him crucified. — 1 Corintiuans, ii. 2. 
 
 Should the apostle, who penned this eloquent ex- 
 pression, resume his ministry on earth, and should he 
 deign to hold converse with us on the principles of his 
 high calling, and should he repeat his strong words : 
 I am now, as of old, determined not to know any thing 
 among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified ; some 
 of us would feel an impulse to ask him : 
 
 " Can your words mean what they appear to imply ? 
 You are learned in Rabbinical literature : you have 
 read the Grecian poets, and even quoted from Aratus : 
 you have examined the statuary of Greece, and have 
 made a permanent record of an inscription upon an 
 altar in ancient Athens; you have reasoned on t .e 
 principles of Aristotle from effect to cause, and have 
 taken rank with the philosophers, as well as orators of 
 the world ; and now, you seem to utter your determina- 
 tion to abandon all knowledge save that which con- 
 cerns the Jew who was crucified. You once said 
 that you had rather speak five words with the under- 
 standing, than ten thousand words in an unknown 
 tongue ; and here, lest the pithy language of this text 
 should fail of being truly apprehended, we desire to 
 learn its precise meaning in three particulars. 
 
12 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 "In the first place, do you intend to assert that 
 our knowledge is controlled by our vvill ? You deter- 
 mined not to know any thing save one ? Can you by 
 mere choice expel all but one of your old ideas, and 
 make your mind like a chart of white paper in refer- 
 ence to the va-t majority of your familiar subjects of 
 thought ?" 
 
 ' I am ready to concede,' is the reply, ' that much 
 of our knowledge is involuntary ; still a part of it is 
 dependent on our will. In some degree, at some 
 times, we may attend to a theme or not attend to it, as 
 we choose, and thus our choice may influence our be- 
 lief, and thus are we responsible, in a certain measure, 
 for our knowledge. Besides, the word, "know," is 
 used by us Hebraistic writers to include not only a 
 mental apprehension, but also a moral feeling. When 
 we know Christ, we feel a hearty complacence in him. 
 Again, to "know" often signifies to manifest^ as well 
 as to possess^ both knowledge and love. We do not 
 know an old acquaintance when we of set purpose 
 withliold all public recognition of him, and act out- 
 wardly as if we were inwardly ignorant of his being. 
 But I, Paul, say to you, as I said to the Corinthians, 
 that I shall make the atonement of Christ, and nothing 
 but the atonement of Christ, the main theme of my 
 regard, of my loving regard, and such loving regard 
 as is openly avowed.' 
 
 Thus our first query is answered ; but there is a 
 second inquiry which some of us would propose to the 
 apostle, were he uttering to us 'personally the words 
 which he wrote to the Corinthians. It is this : 
 
 " Should a Christian minister out of the pulpit, as 
 well as in the pulpit, know nothing save the crucified 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THK ATONEMENT. 13 
 
 one ? Did you not know how to sustain yourself by 
 the manufacture of tents ; and did you not say to 
 the circle of elders at Ephesus : These hands have 
 ministered to my necessities! Did you not dispute 
 with the Roman sergeants — plead your cause before 
 the Roman courts? Must not every minister cease for 
 a time to converse on the work of Jesus, and must he 
 not think of providing for his own household, lest he 
 become worse than an infidel ? " 
 
 ' I am willing to admit,' is the reply, ' that the 
 pul})it is the place where the minister should speak of 
 Christ with more uniform distinctness than in other 
 places: but there are no places, and no times, in 
 which he should fail to manifest, more or less obviously, 
 his interest in his Redeemer. Wherever he goes, he 
 has a pulpit. Whether he eat or drink, or whatever 
 he do, he must do all for the glory of God, and the 
 highest glory of God is Christ, and the highest honor 
 of Christ is in Him crucified. A minister must always 
 respect the proprieties of life ; in honoring them he 
 knoivs that appropriate model man, who, rising from 
 the tomb, wrapped up the napkin that was about His 
 head, and laid it in a place by itself. Now the pro- 
 prieties of life do require a minister to speak in the 
 pulpit on themes more plainly and more easily con- 
 nected with the atonement, than are various themes on 
 whioh he must speak in the market-place or in the 
 schools. But all subjects on which he m<ay discourse 
 do lead, sooner or later, more or less obviously and 
 easily, to the great work of Jesus : and he should con- 
 verse on them with the intent of seizing every hint 
 they give him, following out every line to which they 
 point him, in the direction of the Cross. I have been 
 in many synagogues, and in the temple, and on Mars' 
 
14 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 Hill, and on a Mediterranean ship-deck, and once was 
 I hurried along in a night-ride from Jerusalem to 
 Csesarea with four hundred and seventy soldiers, horse- 
 men and spearmen. I have resided at leisure with my 
 arm chained to a Roman guard in a prison at the Cap- 
 ital of the Roman Empire ; but in all such places I 
 have felt, and everywhere I do feel bound to speak out, 
 and to act out, all the interest which the fitnesses of 
 the occasion admit, in the atonement of Jesus ; and not 
 to manifest, and not to feel any interest in any theme 
 which may lessen my regard for this — the chiefest 
 among ten thousand! ' 
 
 But there is a third question which some of us 
 would propose to the apostle, were he to speak in our 
 hearing the words of the text : 
 
 " Should every man^ as well as every minister, 
 cherish and exhibit no interest in anything but Christ? 
 Should a sailor at the mast-head, a surgeon in the ex- 
 tirpation of the clavicle, a warrior in the critical mo- 
 ment of the last charge, look at nothing, and hear of 
 nothing but the Cross ? Must not every one conduct 
 businesses, and sustain cares which draw his mind away 
 from the atonement ? " 
 
 ' I am ready to grant,' is the reply, ' that some 
 duties are less plainly and less intimately connected 
 than others with the work of Jesus; but all of them 
 are connected with it in some degree, and this con- 
 nection may be seen by all who choose to gain the 
 fitting insight. The great principle of duty belong- 
 ing to the minister in the jDulpit, belongs to him every- 
 where ; and the great principle of duty belonging to 
 the minister, belongs to every man, woman, and child. 
 There is not one religion for the man when he is in the 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 15 
 
 temple, and another religion for the man when lie is in 
 the parlor or in the street. There is not one law for 
 the ordained pastor, and another law for the trades- 
 man or the mechanic. The same law and no different 
 one ; the same religion and no different one, are the 
 law and the religion for apostles, and publicans, and 
 prophets, and taxgatherers, and patriarchs, and children, 
 and nobles, and beggars. Every man is bidden to re- 
 fuse every thing, if it be the nearest friend, who inter- 
 feres with the claims of the Messiah ; and therefore every 
 man, layman as well as clergyman, must keep his eye 
 fixed primarily upon the cross. He may see other 
 things within the range of that cross, but he must keep 
 the cross directly at the angle of his vision, and allow 
 nothing else, when placed side by side with the tree 
 on Calvary, to allure his eye away from that central, 
 engrossing object.' 
 
 Here then is our third question answered ; and in 
 these three replies to these three queries, we perceive 
 the meaning of our text to be : that not the preacher 
 only, but the hearer likewise, not on the first day only, 
 but on every day likewise, not in the religious as- 
 sembly only, but in all assemblies, and in all solitudes 
 likewise, must every man adopt the rule, to give his 
 voluntary, his loving, his secret and open regard to 
 nothing so much as to the character and work of his 
 Redeemer. 
 
 Having inquired into the meaning of the apostle's 
 words, let us proceed, in the next place, to inquire into 
 the importance of making the atonement of Christ the 
 only great object of our thought, speech, and action. 
 
 And here, did we hold a personal interview with 
 the author of our text, we should be prompted to put 
 
16 THE PROJIINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 three additional queries before liim. Our first inquiry 
 would be : 
 
 " Is not your theme too contracted? It is well to 
 know Christ, but in all the varying scenes of life, is it 
 well not to know any thing else. Will not the pulpit 
 become wearisome if, spring and autumn, summer and 
 winter, it confine itself to a single topic ? We have 
 known men preach themselves out by incessant repeti- 
 tions of the scene at Calvary, — a scene thrilling in itself, 
 and on that very account not bearing to be presented in 
 its details, every sabbath day. How much less will the 
 varying sensibilities of the soul endure the reiteration 
 of this tragic tale every day and at every interview ! 
 Such extreme familiarity induces irreverence. The 
 Bible is not confined to this theme. It is rich in ec- 
 clesiastical history, political history, ethical rules, 
 metaphysical discussion, comprehensive theology. It 
 contains one book of ten chapters which has not a 
 single allusion to God, and several books which do not 
 mention Christ ; why then do you shut us up to a 
 doctrine which will circumscribe the mind of good 
 men, and result in making their conversation insipid ?" 
 
 ' Contracted ! ' — this is the reply, — ' and do you 
 consider this topic a limited one, whose height, depth, 
 length, breadth, no finite mind can measure ? Of what 
 would you speak ? ' 
 
 " We would speak of the divine existence." 
 
 'But Christ is the "I am.'" 
 
 "We would speak of the Divine attributes." 
 
 ' But Christ is the Alpha and Omega ; He search- 
 eth the reins and trieth the hearts of men ; He is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever; full of grace 
 and truth ; to Him belong wisdom and power and 
 glory and honor ; of His dominion is no end. Of 
 what then would you speak ? ' 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 17 
 
 " We would speak of the Divine sovereignty." 
 
 ' But Christ taught us to say : Even so Father, for 
 so it seemed good in Tiiy sight — and He and His 
 Father are one.' 
 
 " We would converse on the Divine decrees." 
 
 ' But all things are planned for His praise who 
 was in Christ, and in luliom Christ was at the begin- 
 ning.' 
 
 " We would discourse on electing lova" 
 
 'But the saints are elect in Christ Jesus.' 
 
 " We would utter many words on the creation of 
 men and angels." 
 
 'Now by our Redeemer were all things created 
 that are in heaven and that are in the earth, visible 
 and invisible.' 
 
 "We would converse on the preservation of what 
 has been created." 
 
 ' Now Christ upholdeth all things by the word of 
 His power. What would you have, then, for your 
 theme ? ' 
 
 " We would take the flowers of the field for our 
 theme." 
 
 ' But they are the delight, as well as the contriv- 
 ance of the Redeemer.' 
 
 " We would take for our theme the globes in 
 space." 
 
 ' But they are the work of His fingers.' 
 
 " Then we would take the very winds of heaven 
 for our theme, lawless and erratic as they are." 
 
 ' But Jesus taught us to comment upon these as 
 an illustration of his truth ; his poetic mind gave us 
 the conception that the wind bloweth where it chooseth 
 to blow, and we look on, wondering whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth ; knowing only that it is the 
 
18 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 breatli of the Wonderful Counsellor, who arouseth it as 
 he listeth, or saith, Peace, be still. What else then do 
 you prefer for your topic of conversation ? ' 
 
 " We prefer the laws of nature for our topic." 
 'But in them the Father worketh and Christ 
 worketh equally.' 
 
 " If it be so, we will select the fine and useful arts 
 for our subject." 
 
 ' But all julie materials of these arts, and all the laws 
 which compact them, and all the ingenuity which ar- 
 ranges them are of his architectonic plan. He is the 
 guide of the sculptor, painter, musician, poet. He is 
 the contriver of all the graces which we in our idolatry 
 ascribe to the human discoverer, as if man had origi- 
 nally invented them. The history of the arts is the 
 history of Christ's government on earth. Will you 
 propose, then, some other theme for your remark.' 
 " Do let us converse on the moral law." 
 ' You may ; but Christ gave this law and came to 
 magnify it' 
 
 " Then let us comment on the ceremonial law." 
 ' You may ; but all its types are prophecies of 
 Jesus.' 
 
 " Then we will expatiate on virtue in the general." 
 ' Do so ; but Christ is the first exemplar, the bright- 
 est representative of all abstract goodness, of all your 
 virtue in the general.' 
 
 " Then we will take up ethical maxims." 
 ' Take them up ; but they are embodied in him 
 who is the way, the truth, the life.' 
 
 " We will resort then to human responsibility for 
 our subject of discourse." 
 
 ' But we must all appear before the judgment seat 
 of that fair-minded arbiter who is man as well as God.' 
 " May we not speak of eternal blessedness ? " 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 19 
 
 'Yes; but it is Christ who welcomes his chosen 
 into life.' 
 
 " Shall we not converse, then, on endless misery ?" 
 
 ' Yes ; but it is Christ who will proclaim : Depart 
 ye cursed.' 
 
 "The human body; — we would utter some words 
 on that." 
 
 ' But your present body is the image of what your 
 Lord wore once, and the body that you will have, if you 
 die in the faith, is the image of what your Lord wears 
 now ; — the image of the body slain for our offences and 
 raised again for our justification. And have you still 
 a favorite theme which you have not suggested?' 
 
 " The pleasures of life are our favorite theme." 
 
 ' Yes, and Jesus provided them and graced them at 
 Cana.' 
 
 " The duties of the household are our favorite 
 theme." 
 
 ' Yes, and Jesus has prescribed them and disci- 
 plines you by them, and will judge you for your man- 
 ner of regarding them. What would you have, then, 
 what can you think of for your choice topic of dis- 
 course ?' 
 
 " We love to talk of our brethren in the faith." 
 
 ' But they are indices of Christ, and he is repre- 
 sented by them.' 
 
 " We choose to converse on our Redeemer's indi- 
 gent, imprisoned, diseased, agonized followers." 
 
 ' And he is an hungered, athirst, penniless, afflicted 
 in them, and whatsoever we do to one of them we 
 do to him, and what we say of one of them we say of 
 him.' 
 
 " May we speak in the pulpit of slaves?" 
 
 ' Of slaves ! Can you not speak of Medes and Par- 
 thians, Indians and Arabians ? Why not then of Afri- 
 
20 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 cans ? Have they, or have they not immortal souls ? 
 Was Jesus, or was he not crucified for them ? Was he 
 ashamed of the lowly and the down-trodden, and those 
 who have become the reproach of men and the despised 
 of the people ? You may speak of all for whom Christ 
 died ; as all men, bond or free, and all things, globes 
 or atoms, suggest thoughts leading in a right line or in 
 a curved line to the cross of Christ. All things being 
 thus nearly or remotely suggestive of the atonement, 
 are for your sakes, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, 
 or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or 
 things to come; all are yours, for your thoughts, for 
 your words. If things pertain to the divine essence, 
 the whole of that is the essence of Jesus ; if they pertain 
 to the divine relations, all of them are the relations of 
 Jesus ; if they pertain to the noblest and bri2:htest fea- 
 tures of seraphs, all the angels of God bow down before 
 Jesus ; if they pertain to the minutest changes of human 
 life, in all our vicissitudes Jesus keeps up his brother- 
 hood with us ; if they pertain to the vilest and darkest 
 spot of our depravity, they pertain to Jesus, — for to 
 speak alight of sin is to be determined to speak of 
 Christ and of him crucified for sin. 
 
 ' And is this the doctrine which men call a con- 
 tracted one ? Narrow ! The very suspicion of its 
 being narrow has now suggested the first reason why 
 you should place it and keep it as the crown of all your 
 words and deeds : — it is so large, so rich, so boundless, 
 that you need nothing which excludes it. And there- 
 fore,' continues the Apostle, ' I mean to know and to 
 love nothing, and to make it manifest that I care for 
 nothing, in comparison with, and disconnected from, 
 the God-man, as he developes all his attributes and all 
 his relations on the cross.' 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 21 
 
 But were the author of these laconic words in a 
 familiar conference with us, we might be tempted to 
 address to him a second inquiry : 
 
 " Is not your theme too Large ? At first we deemed 
 it too small, but now it swells out before us into such 
 collossal dimensions that we change our ground, and 
 ask : Can the narrow mind of man take in this multi- 
 plicity of relations, comprehended in both the natures, 
 and in the redemptive, as well as all the other works 
 of Christ ? Do not our frail powers need one day as a 
 day of rest, and one place as a sanctuary of repose, 
 from every thought less tender than that of the atoning 
 death itself? Must we not call in our minds from 
 Christ and him crucified, so as to concentrate all our 
 emotions on the simple fact of Christ crucified ?" 
 
 ' Too large a theme !' — this is the reply, — ' it is a 
 large theme, too large to be fully comprehended by 
 finite intellio:ences. Men have dreamed of exhausting- 
 the atonement, by defining it to be a plan for removing 
 the obstacles which stand in the way of our pardon. 
 It is too large for that definition, as the atonement also 
 persuades the Most High to forgive us. Then men 
 have thought to mark it round about by saying that it 
 is a scheme for inducing God to interpose in our aid. 
 But the atonement is too large for that defining clause, 
 as it also presents motives to man for accepting the 
 interposition of God. Then some have thought to de- 
 fine it exactly^ by saying that the atonement is both an 
 appeal to the Law-giver and also an appeal to the sin- 
 ner. Too large still is the atonement for that explana- 
 tion. It is an appeal to both God and man, but it is 
 more. It is an appeal to tlie universe, and is as many- 
 sided, .as the universe itself is to be variously affected. 
 Can we by searching find out the whole of atoning 
 
22 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 love ? It is the love of him who stretched out his 
 arms on the fatal wood, and pointed to the right hand 
 and to the left hand, and raised his eyes upward, and 
 cast them downward, and thus all things above and 
 below, and on either side, he embraced in his compre- 
 hensive love. It is a large theme, but not too large to 
 operate as a motive upon us. The immeasurable reach 
 of a motive is the hiding of its power. The mind of 
 man is itself expansive, and requires and will have 
 something immense and infinite of truth or error, either 
 overpowering it for good or overmastering it for evil. 
 The atonement is a great theme, but not too great ; 
 and for this additional reason : Its greatness lies, in 
 part, in its reducing all other doctrines to a unity, its 
 arranging them around itself in an order which makes 
 them all easily understood. We know in other things 
 the power of unity amid variety. We know how 
 simple the geography of a land becomes by remember- 
 ing that its rivers, although meandering in unnumbered 
 circuits around the hills and through the vales, yet 
 pursue one main direction from one mountain to one 
 sea. Now all the truths of God flow into the atone- 
 ment. They are understood by means of it, because 
 their tendencies are toward it ; and it is understood by 
 means of them, because it receives and comprehends 
 them. 
 
 ' Consider more fully the first clause of this sentence ; 
 all other truths are understood by means of the atone- 
 ment. It gives to them all a unity by illustrating them 
 all. Other truths are not so much independent themes, 
 as they are branches growing up or side-wise out of 
 this one root, and they need this single theme in or 
 der that their relations may be rightly understood. 
 What, for example, can we know in its most important 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 23 
 
 bearings, unless we know the history and office of our 
 Redeemer ? Begin from what point we may to ex- 
 amine the uses of things, we can never measure their 
 full utility until we view them from the Cross. The 
 trees bud and blossom. Why ? To bear fruit for the 
 sustenance of the human body. But is this an ulti- 
 mate object? The nourishment of the body favors 
 the growth of the mind. But is the human mind an 
 end worthy of all the contrivances in nature ? Does 
 the sun, with all its retinue of stars, pursue its daily 
 course, with no aim ulterior to man's welfare? Do we 
 adopt a Ptolemaic theory in morals, that man is the 
 centre of the system, and other worlds revolve around 
 him ? All thius^s were made for God, as the Beino^ in 
 whom they all terminate. Do they exist for elucidating 
 his power? This is not his chief attribute. His knowl- 
 edge ? There is a nobler perfection than omniscience. 
 His love? But there is one virtue imbedded as a gem 
 in his love, and his love is but a shining casket for this 
 pearl of infinite price. This pearl is grace. This is the 
 central ornament of the character of Jehovah. But there 
 is no grace in Jehovah save as it beams forth in Christ ; 
 not in Christ, as a mere Divinity, nor in Christ as a 
 mere spotless humanity, but in the two united, and in 
 that God-man crucified. All things were made by 
 him and for him, rising from the cross to the throne. 
 Without reference to him in his atoning love, has noth- 
 ing been made that was made in this world. The star 
 in the East led wise men once to the manger where the 
 Redeemer lay ; and all the stars of heaven lead wise 
 men noio to him who has risen above the stars, and 
 whose glory illumines them all. He is termed the sun 
 of righteousness ; and, as the material sun binds all 
 the planets around it in an intelligible order, so does 
 
24 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 Christ shine over, and under, and into, and through all 
 other objects, attract them all to himself, marshal them 
 all into one clear and grand array, showing them all 
 to be his works, all suggestive of our duty, our sin, 
 our need of atonement, our dependence on the one 
 God, and the one Mediator between God and man. 
 
 ' The first clause of ray sentence was, All other 
 truths are understood by means of the atonement. 
 Consider next the second clause : The atonement is 
 understood by means of other truths. It crystallizes 
 them around itself, and reduces them into a system, 
 not only because it explains them, but also because it 
 makes them explain it. It is not too large a theme, for 
 all the sciences and the arts bring their contributions 
 to make it orderly and plain. Our text is a simple 
 one, because its words are interpreted by a thousand 
 facts shining upon it, and making themselves and it 
 luminous in their radiations around and over it. Listen 
 again to its suggestive words : 
 
 "For I determined not to know any thing among 
 you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." 
 
 'Now, what is the meaning of this plain term, 
 "Christ?" It means a "king." But how can we ap- 
 preciate the king, unless we learn the nature of the 
 beings over whom he rules ? He reigns over the 
 heavens ; therefore we investigate the heavens. The 
 whole earth is full of his glory ; therefore we study the 
 earth. He is the Lord over the angels ; when we re- 
 flect on them, we catch a glimpse of him in his regal 
 state. He is the King of the Jews and the Gentiles. 
 When we meditate on men, we enjoy a glance at him 
 who was born for this end, that he might have domin- 
 ion over our race. When we contemplate the material 
 worlds, all the vastness and the grandeur included in 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 25 
 
 tliem ; the sphere of mind, all the refinement and energy 
 involved in it, we are overpowered by the reality, sur- 
 passing fable, that he who superintends all the move- 
 ments of matter and first spake it into being, and once 
 framed, as he now governs, the souls of his creatures, 
 he is the King who atoned for us ; and the more 
 we know of the stars in their courses, and of the spirit 
 in its mysteries, so much the deeper is our awe in 
 view of the condescending pity which moved their 
 Creator to become one with a lowly creature acquaint- 
 ed with grief for you and me. So much is involved 
 in the word, "Christ." 
 
 ' But our text speaks of Jesus Christ. That word, 
 "Jesus!" What is the meaning of it? It means a 
 " deliverer," and in the view of some interpreters it 
 means " God, the deliverer." Deliverer ? From what ? 
 We do not understand the power of his great office, 
 unless we learn the nature and the vileness of sin ; 
 and we have no conception how mean, how detest- 
 able sin is, unless we know the Heedlessness of it, the 
 nobleness of the will which degrades itself into it, the 
 excellence of the law which is dishonored by it. All 
 our studies, then, in regard to the nature of the will, 
 the unforced voluntariness of depravity, the extent of 
 it through our race, the depth of it, the purity of the 
 commands aiming to prevent it, the attractions of vir- 
 tue, the strangeness of their not prevailing over the 
 temptations of vice — they are not mere metaphysics ; 
 — they are studies concerning the truth and the grace 
 of Immanuel, who is God luitli us^ and whose name is 
 "Deliverer," because he delivers his people from their 
 sins ; sins involving the power and the penaltj of free, 
 wrong choice ; a penalty including the everlasting 
 punishment of the soul ; a punishment suggesting the 
 3 
 
26 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 nature and the character of the divine law, and the di- 
 vine Lawgiver, in their relation to the conscience and 
 all the sensibilities of the mind; and that mind, as un- 
 dying as its Maker. All these things are comprehended 
 in the word, "Jesus." 
 
 ' But our text speaks of Jesus Christ and him cru- 
 cified : and this third term, " crucified," adds an em- 
 phasis to the two preceding terms, and stirs us up to 
 examine our own capabilities, to learn the skill per- 
 vading our physical organism, so exquisitely qualified 
 for pain as well as pleasure ; the wisdom apparent 
 in our mental structure, so keenly sensitive to all that 
 can annoy as well as gratify ; and thus we catch a 
 glimpse of the truth, that he who combines all of our 
 dignity with none of our guilt, and with all of the di- 
 vine glory, and who thus developes all that is fit to 
 be explained in man, and all that can be explained 
 in God, he it is who chose to hang and linger 
 with aching nerve and bleeding heart upon the cross 
 for you and me. This cross makes out an atonement 
 of the sciences and the arts, and brings them also, as 
 well as devout men, at one with God; all of them 
 tributary to the doctrine that we are bought with a 
 price, that we are redeemed, not with silver and gold, 
 but with the precious blood of a man, who was God 
 manifest in the flesh. — Too large a theme is the atone- 
 ment? But it breaks down the middle wall of par- 
 tition that has kept apart the different studies of men, 
 and it brings them together as illustrations of the truth, 
 which in their light becomes as simple as it is great. 
 
 ' The very objection, then, that the redemptive work 
 is too extensive for our familiar converse, has suggest- 
 ed the second reason why it should be the main thing 
 for us to think upon, and speak upon, aiid act upon : 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 27 
 
 It systematizes all other themes, and gains from them a 
 unity which becomes the plainer because it is set off 
 by aluminous variety; and for this cause,' continues 
 the apostle, ' I intend to know nothing with supreme 
 love, except this centralizing doctrine which combines 
 all other truths into a constellation of glories.' 
 
 There is still a third inquiry which we might pre- 
 sent to the author of our text, could we meet him in a 
 personal colloquy : 
 
 " Your words all converge toward one point; will 
 they not then become monotonous, and inapposite to 
 the varying wants of various, or even the same indi- 
 viduals?" 
 
 'A monotonous theme !' — this is the reply : ' What 
 can be more diversified than the character and work of 
 him who is at one time designated as the omniscient 
 God, and at another time as a mechanic ; at one time as 
 a judge, and at another time as an intercessor ; now a 
 lion, and then a lamb ; here a vine, a tree, there a way, 
 a door ; again a stone, a rock, still again a star, a sun ; 
 here without sin, and there he was made sin for us. 
 
 ' Monotonous is this theme ? Then it is sadly 
 wronged, and the mind of man is sadly harmed ; for 
 this mind shoots out its tendrils to grasp all the branches 
 of the tree of life, and the tree in its healthy growth 
 has branches to which every sensibility of the human 
 mind may cling. The judgment is addressed by the 
 atonement, concerning the nature of law, of distribu- 
 tive justice, the mode of expressing this justice either 
 by punishing the guilty or by inflicting pain as a sub- 
 stitute for punishment, the influence of this substitu- 
 tion on the transgressor, on the surety, on the created 
 universe, on God himself There is more of profound 
 
28 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 and even abstruse philosophy involved in the specific 
 doctrine of the atonement, than in any other branch 
 of knowledge ; and there has been or will be more of 
 discussion upon it, than upon all other branches of 
 knowledge ; for sacred science is the most fruitful of 
 all sciences in logical deduction, and this specific part 
 of the science is the richest of all its parts. 
 
 'Not only the judgment, but also the imagination is 
 addressed by the atonement ; as this is the comprehen- 
 sive event pointing to those three several hours, the 
 like to which have never been heard of, no, nor ever 
 shall be : that first hour, the hour of humiliating 
 change, when the Son of God, who had been from the 
 beginning with God, gathering in the praises of angels 
 and enjoying the honors of his universal reign, on a 
 sudden left the bosom of his Father, and choirs of 
 angels followed far off from his train, and heralded 
 to the shepherds his arrival on earth ; — and that sec- 
 ond hour, the hour of gloom, when the only-begotten 
 Son, smitten of the Father, cried out with a loud voice 
 at the heaviness of the blow, and the earth was aston- 
 ished more than when the prophet asked of old : 
 Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? Was 
 thine anger against the rivers ? Was thy wrath against 
 the sea? — and that third hour, the hour of triumph, 
 when his troops of heralds shouted at his arrival : Lift 
 up your heads, ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye 
 everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in, 
 scarred in his hands and feet and side, but over all his 
 foes victorious, and marching from his cross to his 
 throne, — and let all the angels of God now worship 
 him ! What was the appearance of heaven, how did its 
 hosts look during that first hour, when the very light of 
 heaven moved out of its place and descended grace- 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 29 
 
 fully like a star to Bethlehem. And what was the 
 solemnity in heaven, what was the deed done there, 
 during that second hour, when the first Person with- 
 drew himself from the second Person, and the angels 
 veiled their faces at the unutterable solitude of him 
 who trod the wine-press alone ? And what was the 
 festival in the realm of joy during that third hour, 
 when its monarch came riding prosperously home, with 
 his sword upon his thigh, and all the hearts of the re- 
 deemed threw open their doors for his glad entrance 
 — a conqueror, and more than conqueror, welcome, 
 welcome to his everlasting rest! At these three 
 scenes, in a life all full of transporting eras, the imagi- 
 nation falters, and lingers around them, and loses it- 
 self in a strange delight, and whether it be in the body 
 or out of the body, it cannot tell. And will you say 
 that scenes like these are monotonous?' 
 
 " Not so for the poet or the philosopher," we might 
 reply, " but are they variously appropriate for the 
 common mind ? " 
 
 ' The common mind ! ' — this is the rejoinder. ' The 
 common mind is reached first of all by the atonement. 
 Those children who cried "hosanna" in the temple, are 
 yet in our eye as pictures of thousands of children, who 
 feel and love the divine attributes as they are made 
 plain and well nigh tangible in Jesus. Simeon and Anna 
 yet stand in that same temple as statues representing 
 hundreds of aged saints, who love to read the history of 
 their Redeemer when all other letters become illeeri- 
 ble, and who can hear his voice when all other voices 
 become inaudible, and who grow young again as his 
 fresh doctrine rejuvenates their heart. Zacclieus climb- 
 ing the sycamore still remains in our vision as a symbol 
 of many a rich extortioner, who cannot rest until he 
 
30 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 has entertained his Lord, and consecrated the half of 
 his goods to the poor, who are to be always with him, 
 reminding him of their Redeemer. That widow weep- 
 ing as she measures her slow steps out of the city, and 
 smiling through her tears as she receives her son 
 healthy from the bier on which he was borne toward 
 the needlessly opened tomb, yet continues in our view 
 as a representative of many a mourner relieved by his 
 timely charities. Those minstrels who laughed him to 
 scorn are images of millions who despise him, and then 
 he blesses them, and then with glad voice they spread 
 the fame of him round about ; the fame of him whose 
 mission it is to render good for evil, and to be the friend 
 of his foes. If I desire to be soothed, I find nowhere 
 such gentleness as at his last supper. If I aim to be 
 stimulated, I find nothing like his crown of thorns 
 stirring me to duty. If I need to be joyous, whither 
 shall I go but to him, all whose garments smell of 
 myrrh, and aloes, and cassia out of the ivory palaces, 
 whereby they have made him glad. 
 
 ' The very intimation that the atonement addresses 
 only one sensibility, and is appropriate to only one class 
 of men, in one mood of mind, has now suggested the 
 third reason w^hy this doctrine should be the main 
 spring of our inward and outward enterprise : It is so 
 flexile and multiform, that it must be apposite to every 
 man in every change of character or state ; and there- 
 fore,' continues the apostle, ' I desire to make nothing 
 prominent in my inward thought or outward life, ex- 
 cept this ever-fitting truth of Jesus Christ and him 
 crucified ! ' 
 
 Having now stated three reasons why it is impor- 
 tant to make the redemptive scheme our main object 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 31 
 
 of interest, let us close this discourse with three brief 
 inquiries into the method of giving the desired promi- 
 nence to this wonderful scheme. 
 
 And, first, were we conversing face to face with 
 the author of our text, when he had become Paul the 
 aged and the counsellor, we might ask him : 
 
 "In what method shall we resist our natural disin- 
 clination to make the grace of Christ so conspicuous ? 
 Is there not such a disinclination ? Will not your 
 hearers, will not you yourself, much more, shall not 
 we who have never been caught up to the third heaven, 
 feel tempted to elevate self above the redemptive 
 mercy ^ 
 
 ' I fear it ; ' — this is the reply, — ' I fear it for my- 
 self Many secret misgivings have disturbed me. I 
 know the need of watchfulness. But I have a fixed 
 resolve. If any man be tempted to find some less 
 humbling theme, I more. Circumcised the eighth 
 day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, 
 an Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a 
 Pharisee (after the most straitest sect I lived a Phari- 
 see), as touching the righteousness of the law blame- 
 less. Yet I am determined to count all these things as 
 loss, that I may win Christ. 
 
 ' You inquire about my hearers. They luill prefer 
 to gratify their self-esteem, rather than receive the 
 excellency of the knowledge of Jesus. I have tried 
 them again and again. I knew the pride of Corinth 
 when I avowed to her citizens : I am determined to know 
 nothing among you save Jesus Christ,and him crucified. 
 I knew then that Corinth was called, The Wealthy. 
 For more than eighteen months I dwelt within her 
 proud walls. I met her glad citizens on the Aero- 
 
32 THE PROMINEXCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 corintlius, enjoying their magnificent scenery. I saw 
 them going down the marble steps of their fountain 
 Peirene, where their famed Pegasus, as they believed, 
 was caught by Bellerophoft. I visited their Stadium, 
 and I drew one of my illustrations from it. I looked 
 in upon their Theatre, and was moved by it to exclaim: 
 We are become a Theatre to the world, to angels, to 
 men. I beheld the gay throngs at the Corinthian 
 Amphitheatre, that edifice so massive, that the remains 
 of it, as also of their Stadium and their Theatre, are yet 
 to be seen, and long after your dying day will be 
 visited and admired by your own countrymen. It is 
 true, I did feel often that those votaries of pleasure 
 would look upon my preaching of the cross as foolish- 
 ness in comparison with their rounds of festivity. But 
 none of these things moved me. I was not ashamed 
 of the Gospel of Christ. / had a fixed plan, I wrote 
 from Corinth to the very capital of the world : So much 
 as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you 
 who are at Rome also. Wherever I went, I knew that 
 bonds and imprisonment awaited me for my chief 
 theme of discourse, yet I was determined to confer not 
 with flesh and blood; for I said: A necessity is upon 
 me ; yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel of 
 Christ even in the palaces of Corinth and of Rome. 
 And if mi/ steadfast resolution helped me to resist my 
 own and my hearers' pride in the brilliant cities of the 
 East, then your set resolve will nerve you anywhere, 
 everywhere, to the same humbling service. 
 
 'Here, then, is the first method in which you may 
 keep up the habit of making Jesus and him crucified, 
 the soul of all your activity : Bring to your help the 
 force of a resolute determination. There is a tendency 
 in this resolute spirit to divert your thoughts from 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 33 
 
 other themes, to turn the current of your sensibilities 
 into the right channel, to invigorate your choice, to 
 exert a direct and reflex influence in confirming the 
 whole soul in Jesus. God is in that determination. 
 He inspires it. He invigorates it. He works with it 
 and by it. There is a power in it, but the power is 
 not yours ; it is the power of God. God is in every 
 holy resolve of man.' 
 
 In our interview with the apostle we should ad- 
 dress to him a second inquiry : 
 
 " In what method can we avoid both the fact and 
 the appearance of being slavishly coerced into the habit 
 of conversing on Christ and on Christ alone ? You 
 speak of taking your stand, adhering to your decision ; 
 but this dry, stiff resolve, — comes any genial spirit 
 from it ? Will you not be a slave to your unswerving 
 purpose ? Your inflexible rule, — will it not be a hard 
 one, wearisome to yourself, disagreeable to others ? 
 You hold up a weighty theme by a dead lift." 
 
 ' I am determined,' — this is the reply, — ' and it is 
 not only a strong, but it is a loving resolve. For the 
 love of Christ constraineth me; whom having not seen 
 in the flesh I love ; in whom, though now I see him 
 not, yet believing, I rejoice with joy unspeakable and 
 full of glory. It is not a business-like resolution. It 
 is not a diplomatic purpose. It is not a mechanical 
 force. It is an affectionate decision. It is a joyous 
 rule. It is the effluence of a supreme attachment to 
 the Redeemer. 
 
 ' And this is the second method in which you may 
 retain Jesus Christ as the jewel of your speech and 
 life : Cherish a loving purpose to do so. A man has 
 strength to accomplish what with a full soul he longs 
 
34 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 to accomplish. Your Christian toil will be irksome to 
 yon, if it be not your cordial preference; but if your 
 undeviatiug resolve spring out of a hearty choice of 
 your Saviour, then will it be ever refreshed and en- 
 livened by your outflowing, genial preference ; then 
 will your pious work be the repose of your soul. There 
 is a power in your love to your work. It is a jDower 
 to make your labor easy for yourself and attractive to 
 others. This is not your power ; it is the power of 
 God. He enkindles the love within you. He enlivens 
 it. He gives it warmth. He makes it instinct with 
 energy. God is in all the holy joy of man. 
 
 In our conference with the author of our text we 
 might suggest to him our third and last inquiry : 
 
 "In what method can we feel sure of persevering 
 in this habitual exaltation of Christ? You speak of 
 your stern purpose, but can you depend upon the 
 continuance of it ? You speak of your cordial as well 
 as set resolve. But who are you ? (forgive our perti- 
 nacious query.) Jesus we know. But his disciples, 
 his chief apostles — is not every one of them a reed 
 shaken with the wind, tossed hither and thither, un- 
 unstable as a wave upon the sea ?" 
 
 'I know it is so,' — this is the reply. ' Often am I 
 afraid lest, having preached the Gospel to others, I 
 should be a castaway. And after all I am persuaded 
 that nothing, height, depth, life, death, nothing shall 
 be able to separate me from the love of Christ ; for 
 put my confidence in him, and while my purpose is 
 inflexible and affectionate, it is also inwrought with 
 trust in the atonement and the intercession. I do pur- 
 sue my Christian life in weakness and in fear and in 
 much trembling. For all the piety of the best of men 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 35 
 
 is in itself as grass, and the goodliness thereof as the 
 flower of the field. Therefore serve I the Lord with 
 all humility of mind and with many tears and tempta- 
 tions. Yet I am determined with a confiding love. I 
 am troubled on every side, my flesh has no rest, with- 
 out are fightings, within are fears ; in presence I am 
 base among yon, my bodily presence is weak and my 
 speech contemptible ; and if I must needs glory, I 
 will glory in the things which concern my infirmities. 
 Still, after all, I am determined^ my right hand being 
 enfolded in the hand of my Redeemer. I know whom 
 I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to 
 keep that which I have committed unto him against 
 that day. For my conversation is in heaven, from 
 whence I am to look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who shall change our vile body that it may be 
 fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the 
 mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all 
 things unto himself I say the truth in Christ ; I lie 
 not ; I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet 
 to be called an apostle because I injured the church of 
 God ; I am less than the least of all saints. Still I am 
 determined ; for by the grace of God I am what I am ; 
 and this grace which was bestowed upon me was not in 
 vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all ; yet 
 not 1 but the grace of God which was with me; for I 
 can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth 
 me, and therefore I am determined. 
 
 ' Borne onward, therefore, by your fixed plan, and 
 no one can succeed in any thing without a plan, yet 
 you must never rely ultimately upon your determined 
 spirit. Allured further and further onward by your de- 
 light in your plan, and no one can work as a master in 
 any thing without enthusiasm in his prescribed course, 
 
36 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT, 
 
 still you must not place your final dependence upon 
 your affectionate spirit ; for if you take, for your last 
 prop, either the sternness or the cheerfulness of your 
 own determination, then you will hioiu your determi- 
 nation, and you are 7iot to know any thing save Jesus 
 Christ and him crucified. Here, then, is the third 
 method in which you may give the fitting prominence 
 to the best of themes : You must rest for your chief 
 and final support on him and only on him, from whom 
 all wise plans start, by whom they all hold out, to 
 whom they all tend, who is all and in all, Jesus Christ 
 and him crucified.' 
 
 My Christian brethren, you are all apostles. Every 
 man, every woman, every child, the richest and the 
 poorest, the most learned and the most ignorant of 
 you — who have come up hither to dedicate yourselves 
 and this sanctuary to your Lord, all being sent of Him 
 to serve Him, have in fact and in essence the same 
 responsibility resting on you as weighed on the author 
 of our text. And he was burdened by the same kind 
 of temptations and fears which oppress your spirit. 
 But he was held up from failing in his work by a 
 three-fold cord ; and that was his resolute determina- 
 tion, as loving as it was resolute, and as trustful as it 
 was loving, to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him 
 crucified. The last that you hear of him as an impeni- 
 tent man is in the words : " And Saul, yet breathing 
 out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of 
 the Lord." It was Christ whom the proud Jew last 
 opposed. The first that you hear of him as a convicted 
 man is in the words: " Who art thou. Lord?" It was 
 Christ whom the inquiring Jew first studied. And the 
 first that you hear of him as a penitent man is : " Lord, 
 
THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMENT. 37 
 
 what wilt thou have me to do ?" It was Christ to 
 whom the humble disciple first surrendered his will. 
 And the first that you hear of him as a Christian minis- 
 ter is : " And straightway he preached Christ in the 
 synagogues that he is the Son of God." And the last 
 that you hear of him as a Christian hero is : "I have 
 fought the good fight, I have finished my course. 
 I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for 
 me a crown of righteousness." And the secret of this 
 victorious career is in words like those of our text : ' I 
 adhered to my plan (when among the fickle Corin- 
 thians) ; I was decided (when among the vacillating 
 Galatians) ; to know nothing (when among the learned 
 at Athens and them of Ceesar's household at Rome) ; 
 save Jesus Christ (when I was among my own kins- 
 men, who scorned him), and him crucified (when I 
 was among the pupils of Gamaliel, all of whom despised 
 my chosen theme) ; still I was determined to cling to 
 that theme among the Greeks and the barbarians, be- 
 fore Ouesimus the slave and Philemon the proud 
 master ; for I loved my theme, and, suffering accord- 
 ing to the will of God, I committed the keeping of my 
 soul to him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.' 
 
 And herein is it to be your plan, my brethren, and 
 your joy, not to make this sanctuary the resort of 
 wealth and of fashion, but rather of humble suppliants, 
 who by their prayers may divert all the wealth and 
 fashion of the world into the service of your Lord ; 
 not to make this temple the resting place of hearers 
 who shall idly listen to the words of an orator, but a 
 temple of earnest co-workers with Christ, thinking of 
 him, speaking of him, loving him first and last and 
 midst and without end. As you come to this £ouse of 
 God on the Sabbath, as you go from it, as your week- 
 
38 THE PROMINENCE OF THE ATONEMNNT. 
 
 day recollections gather around it, may yoli renew 
 and confirm your plan to know your Redeemer, and 
 
 not only to know him, but who is sufficient for 
 
 these things? — not to know any thing save your Re- 
 deemer ; and not only to shut yourselves up to the su- 
 preme love of nothing except Christ, but also, his 
 
 grace will be sufficient for you, to worship and 
 
 serve Christ in the central relation of him crucified. 
 Knowing him alone, he will sustain you as fully as if 
 he knew you alone. He will come to you in this 
 temple as frequently as if he had no other servants to 
 befriend. He will listen to your prayers as intently 
 as if no supplications came up to him from other 
 altars, and he will intercede for you as entirely as if he 
 interceded in behalf of no one else ; for remember, that 
 when he hung upon the cross, he thought of you, and 
 died for you, just as fully as if he had been determined 
 to think of no one, and to die for no one, save you, 
 whom he now calls to the solemn service of consecrat- 
 ing your own souls, and your "holy and beautiful 
 house" to the glory of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 
 
HISTORICAL STATEMENT 
 
 AND 
 
 FORMAL DEDICATION OF THE HOUSE, 
 
 BY THE PASTOR, 
 
 REV. JOSEPH p. THOMPSON, D.D. 
 
 " Two years ago — on the last Sabbath in April, 1857 — this 
 church assembled for the last time in the house where it was organ- 
 ized, and where for seventeen years it had maintained the worship of 
 God and the institutions of the Gospel, not alone for its own edifica- 
 tion, but for the benefit of a great and miscellaneous congregation, 
 including large numbers of young men and of strangers, lieluc- 
 tantly constrained by the removal of its resident members and the 
 encroachment of business upon its location, to abandon a house 
 which, however secularized by necessary uses, had been often hal- 
 lowed by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and by the association of 
 great Christian convocations, the Tabernacle Church sought carefully 
 and prayerfully for a site which should answer its highest aims of 
 usefulness. Beginning at Fourth street, we canvassed the whole 
 ground from that point to Fortieth, and from the Third avenue to 
 the Seventh, and finally, with much hesitation selected this spot, 
 three miles above the old Tabernacle, as a point at which we might 
 in ieu years gather a substantial congregation. It was our hope that 
 by degrees the larger part of our members would establi.sii their 
 homes in this vicinity. Already we find that more than one half of 
 our stated congregation reside above this location ; and there begins 
 to be a demand for church accommodation a mile north of us. We 
 of this church shall rejoice to see that region occupied, whether by 
 our own or any other denomination of the household of Faith. 
 
 " The first year of our removal from the old Tabernacle was 
 divided between the City Assembly Rooms on Broadway and the 
 Home Chapel in Twenty-ninth street. With a fluctuating congrega- 
 tion and no permanent home, we could not look for large accessions 
 to our numbers ; yet we shall always remember with gratitude our 
 pleasant social worship in Home Chapel, and scenes of mercy there 
 enjoyed. 
 
 " On the first Sabbath of last May we were permitted to take 
 possession of our own chapel under this roof, where we have con- 
 tinued to worship until the present time. During that year more 
 than one hundred persons have been added to the communion of this 
 church, and our Sabbath school has more than doubled its numbers. 
 To-day we rejoice in the privilege so long anticipated, of worshipping 
 in the sanctuary which shall henceforth be our home. This spacious 
 and attractive edifice, though not so commodious as the old Taber- 
 nacle,' will contain as large a congregation as can well be cared for 
 by a single pastor. And it is better that we should here concentrate 
 
40 DEDICATION OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 Btrenirtli with a view to vigorous colonization from time to time, than 
 to dissipate our influence as a church upon a changing multitude. 
 
 " This house, which is founded throughout upon the native rock, 
 is built of the best materials and in the most substantial manner. 
 During all the progress of the work, the Trustees and Building Com- 
 mittee having availed themselves of the best professional skill, have 
 given to it their active and patient superintendence, and with con- 
 scientious fidelity have discharged the responsibility committed to 
 them. The church and society have in all proper ways co-operated 
 in the work, and every one has contributed a part ; — the ladies' circle 
 with the fruits of their pleasant toil, have provided the furniture of 
 this pulpit and its platform, as well as that of the social rooms in 
 the chapel. The house, now furnished for the worship of God in 
 every particular except the organ, has .been completed without ac- 
 cident to life or limb. 
 
 " It does not accord with our views of worship under the Chris- 
 tian dispensation, nor with the usages of our body, to attach sanctity 
 to a material structure. But it does accord with the inmost sense 
 of propriety and with the devout sentiment of Christian gratitude, 
 and it has also the warrant of Scripture, that we should set apart 
 with due solemnity the place in which we and our children shall 
 worship God, and should hallow it in our thoughts and associations. 
 Now, therefore, ye people, blessed of the Lord, I would call upon 
 you to arise'" and join with me in offering this new temple to the ser- 
 vice of the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghos.l^ 
 We bring to God with reverence and gratitude this house of prayer 
 . and praise, beseeching him to hallow it with his presence in our 
 assemblies and his blessing upon our worship. We dedicate these 
 walls to the uses of a chui'ch of Christ. We dedicate these seats for 
 the solemn and joyful convocations of God's people, in the reverent 
 worship of his Name, and the devout hearing of his Word. We 
 dedicate this choir to the service of song in the house of the Lord. 
 We dedicate this pulpit to the preaching of Christ and him crucified ; 
 and this table of communion to that high and sacred service whereby 
 we do show forth the Lord's death till he come. May he whose 
 glory fills the heavens condescend to meet his people in this house. 
 May Christ here build into his temple new and living stones. May 
 the Holy Spirit here bless the Word unto sanctification and eternal 
 life. May our children and our children's children here worship in 
 the beauty of holiness, when we shall slumber in the dust. And 
 when our earthly house of this Tabernacle shall be dissolved, may 
 we enter upon a purer, nobler worship in that city where the Lord 
 God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And to the King 
 Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, be glory in the 
 church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end 
 Amen." 
 
 * At tLis point the entire assembly arose, and stood during the remainder of 
 this dedication. 
 
II. 
 
 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIA}(S THE 
 TEMPLE OF GOD. 
 
 EICHAED S. STORKS, Jr., D. D 
 
 PASTOR OP THE CnXTECn OF THE PILGEUIS, BKOOKLTN, N. Y. 
 
SERMON 
 
 For ye are the temple of the living God ; as Ood hath said, I will 
 dwell in them, and walk in than; and I loill he their God, and they 
 shall be my people. — 2 Corinthians, vi. 16. 
 
 It is a natural characteristic of systems of lieathen- 
 ism, that they recognize the local residence on earth of 
 their manifold divinities. Sometimes upon distant 
 and inaccessible mountains these are held to be en- 
 throned ; sometimes to haunt the forest wilds, or to 
 walk amid verdurous and solitary meadows, filled with 
 sunshine and the murmur of streams; and sometimes 
 to lurk in the shadowy caverns which a more majestic 
 than human art has hung with its pendents, or strewn 
 with the fragments of their vari-colored crystals. The 
 sacred oak-tree at Dodona, with doves nestling along 
 its boughs, and giving the responses of the god to the 
 worshippers, is the primitive shrine of one divinity. 
 The mighty cloud-crowned summit of Olympus holds ou 
 it, invisible to mortal eyes, the city where all the gods 
 assemble, and the gates of which open directly into 
 Heaven. 
 
 Always a special indwelling of the gods in the 
 TEMPLES built for them, or where they were worshipped, 
 
44 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHEISTIANS 
 
 has been asserted by heathenism ; and herein has been 
 one of the chiefest of the secrets of its hold upon 
 mankind. The temples of Venus, all over the East ; 
 of Diana, at Eleusis or at Ephesus ; of Jupiter Capi- 
 tolinus, at Eome or at Antioch ; the temples of Isis, 
 Osiris, or Serapis, the gigantic remains of which 
 still amaze the beholder at Philte or at Thebes ; and 
 that magnificent cluster of temples, flashing in the 
 splendor of a consummate art subduing and exalting 
 the most perfect material, which made the Acropolis, 
 and the city beneath it, the wonder of the world : all 
 these, as well as those which have succeeded them in 
 other parts of the earth, and • down to our times, have 
 been held thus honored. It has been believed that the 
 divinities to whom these respectively pertained had 
 residence in them ; and that there pre-eminently, if not 
 there solely, they would hear and answer the prayers 
 of petitioners. So the earth has come to seem peopled 
 with gods. To the imaginative worshipper the air about 
 him has been quick with their presence. And if the 
 character attributed to them had been less brutal and 
 gross than it was, more high and celestial, something 
 of elevating and purifying force would infallibly have 
 passed from it into human society. This localizing 
 of the imagined presence of the gods has given to 
 the different religions of the world nearly all their 
 effectiveness. 
 
 And the same thing in part, as applied to Jehovah, 
 the living and true God, is shown in the Mosaic sys- 
 tem. It was one great means of educating the He- 
 brews, and of making their conceptions of truth more 
 vivid, to associate particular promises and gifts with 
 particular places. It was necessary, too, to preserve 
 their separate national unity, until the Messiah should 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 45 
 
 come for the world from the midst of this special and 
 continuous people, — it was necessary to perfect and 
 maintain their integrity, amid the fluctuations of empire 
 around them, against the frequent shock of war, and in 
 spite of occasional punitive deportations, — that the 
 nation should be anchored to certain fixed points ; the 
 centres, not only of society or of government, but 
 equally, and even primarily, of the religion which 
 constructed and consecrated these ; that there should 
 be localities, to which the Assyrian captives could look 
 back, to which Ezra and Nehemiah might return to 
 rebuild the venerated ruins, and around which should 
 rally, age after age, and through all alternations, the 
 affections of the people. 
 
 So the temple was erected on the steep and rocky 
 crest of Moriah, the summit consecrated long before 
 by Abraham's faith and the angel's interference, and 
 in that temple the Shekinah was revealed ; and that 
 was the centre of the whole Hebraic system. From 
 every land the Israelite turned with ardent heart to 
 the Temple and its glories. He thought of them by the 
 river of Chebar. His heart remembered them beneath 
 the hanging gardens of Babylon, or before the majestic 
 shapes of Nimroud. The thought of them gave him 
 his song in the night ; and the hope of restoring them, 
 when they were overthrown, shed fervor and courage 
 over his life. For in the Temple JEHOVAH dwelt. 
 More beautiful than all palaces, because invested with 
 nobler promises, it was awful as Sinai, with the pres- 
 ence of Omnipotence. All ornament was appropriate, 
 yet all was too poor for it, since the Highest was in it. 
 The valley of the Jordan gave up of its lilies, the 
 meadows of their pomegranates, Lebanon of his 
 cedai's, distant lands of their gold, to make the place 
 
46 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 of the Lord glorious ; and tlieii within it the luminous 
 pillar which had traversed the wilderness, and had 
 there been the wondrous leader of Israel, became fixed 
 and resident, and added to all material beauties its 
 heavenly glory. This was natural, needful, in the 
 Mosaic economy ; and so it was ordained. 
 
 But when Christ came, this localizing of Divinity, 
 this transient limitation of the Divine manifestation to 
 certain places and a sensible apparatus, was no longer 
 needful. The Hebrew nation had accomplished then 
 its great historic and providential mission, and a relig- 
 ion was now to be evolved from it more simple, 
 spiritual, and so universal ; a religion which should be, 
 like the Lord who revealed it, possessed of a matchless 
 inherent energy, which localities could not limit nor 
 time exhaust. 
 
 It was therefore in intimate and evident accord- 
 ance with the genius of Christianity that there should 
 be to it no consecrated localities ; no places as such 
 set apart from the world for the more auspicious and 
 successful worship of Him who is invisible. The differ- 
 ence between Christianity and Judaism is herein 
 plainly shown; the immeasurable superiority of the 
 former is declared. The true doctrine is more emphati- 
 cally declared concerning God's nature, His govern- 
 ment, and His presence. A higher degree of moral 
 culture is supposed in mankind ; and the power is sent 
 forth which shall raise and refine yet more largely that 
 culture, and shall finally make it complete through the 
 earth. 
 
 There are therefore almost no strictly personal mon- 
 uments left us of Jesus. It was not intended that he 
 should be revered in particular places, as if these had 
 a sanctity. No gallery has his portrait, though the efiS- 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 47 
 
 gies of the emperors and commanders of his day are 
 familiar to all the collectors of coins — are often seen in 
 the galleries of sculpture. We know precisely how 
 Pilate looked. We do not know, and shall not until 
 we ascend after him, the lines of His majestic face who 
 stood before Pilate, at once captive and judge. The 
 very dates of his history are many of them inextricably 
 lost, amid the confusions of tradition and conjecture. 
 We do not know the month of his birth. We are 
 only confident that it could not have been the month 
 assigned by tradition and custom ; that it must have 
 been either in the Autumn or the Spring, when the shep- 
 herds would naturally watch their flocks in the fields, 
 and the stalls at the inn would be naturally unoccupied. 
 We do not know the precise localities of his most 
 amazing miracles, or of the far larger parts of his life. 
 The town of Bethlehem, the village of Nazareth, the 
 sea of Tiberias, the heights that sweep outward around 
 Jerusalem, abide there still. Still flows the Jordan 
 along his ancient and well-worn courses. Still rises 
 Samaria amid its magnificent amphitheatre of hills. 
 Ebal and Gerizim enshadow the watered valley yet. 
 Mount Hermon looks northward, as of old, toward 
 Damascus ; and Carmel on the sea. And undoubtedly 
 they who now traverse those lands experience somewhat 
 of peculiar emotion, as they linger amid scenes where 
 they know the Lord has trodden ; as they float upon 
 waters which they know that he has crossed. But the 
 specific localities which he dwelt in, and which would 
 have seemed precious for ever to his people through 
 this association with him and his life, the houses he 
 occupied, the streets he traversed, the trees beneath 
 whose shadow he rested, the solitary places where he 
 went out to pray, these all are unknown. We do not 
 
48 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 know precisely where tie was baptized. We do not 
 know precisely where lie was transfigured. The moun- 
 tain on which he wrestled, fasting, with the Spirit 
 of temptation, is but doubtfully conjectured. The 
 mountain from which he preached that sermon which 
 has made the tour of all lands and times, and which 
 shall endure, still young as the morning, till the earth 
 itself vanishes — the mountain we cannot name at all ; 
 only the Word forever remains to us, dissevered from 
 all material associations, and piercing through time, as 
 of right it ought, with arrowy directness and a divine 
 ubiquity. 
 
 There seems, indeed, to have been a most evident 
 Providential interference to prevent these localities 
 from being so definitely ascertained and admitted 
 that there should be danger of idolatrous regard to 
 them. It was not till after the close, you remember, 
 of the first quarter of the fourth century from the ad- 
 vent of Christ, that the mother of Constantino set out 
 to discover the to her sacred spots of the Nativity, 
 the Ascension, and the Sepulchre in the Garden. 
 She was an aged and credulous woman, not a discern- 
 in o* and practised scholar. She was compelled to 
 o-rope her way through all the obstructions which 
 centuries of Paganism had gathered about the relics of 
 the city, which the Jews had then for seven genera- 
 tions been forbidden to approach. She was attended 
 by a retinue of profligate courtiers or enthusiastic 
 devotees ; and she travelled in state, without minute 
 explorations. She lived, too, in an age when almost 
 every thing was credited if it had in it the attraction 
 of strangeness, if it appealed to the quick superstitious 
 sensibilities. It is not marvellous, therefore, that she 
 should have disdained the suggestions of history, and 
 have professed to be guided in general by tradition. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 49 
 
 and in special cases by supernatural revelation, in her 
 inquiry for the places which she sought ; or that the 
 result of that inquiry should be, we may not say with- 
 out interest perhaps, but certainly without validity to 
 us ; — the birth-place at Bethlehem being assigned to a 
 cavern, which hardly answers any one of the condi- 
 tions in the narrative of the Evangelists ; the scene of 
 the Ascension being certainly misplaced, on the sum- 
 mit of Olivet, and not at Bethany ; and the site of the 
 Sepulchre, with that of the Crucifixion, being located 
 by her within the city, not outside it. 
 
 So the whole religion of Christ remains, essentially 
 dissociated from places. The very Cana of Galilee, in 
 which he wrought his earliest miracle, is not yet iden- 
 tified beyond dispute. The Mount of Precipitation 
 has been transported by monkish legends two miles at 
 least from the village of Nazareth. The site of Caper- 
 naum, where he dwelt so long, and wrought so many 
 wonders of power, cannot be traced. We may as well 
 seek to find now the water with which he washed the 
 disciples' feet, as to find that upper chamber in Jerusa- 
 lem, or the spot where it stood, in which he instituted 
 his Last Supper. The very height of Calvary has gone. 
 Why is this, except that his Religion is to roam the 
 earth in an absolute freedom, and to be as completely 
 and as permanently at home in every place as it could 
 have been at Jerusalem or at Nazareth ? Therefore, 
 the house in which he dwelt has perished from the 
 earth. Therefore the fig-tree which he looked upon 
 and cursed, has crumbled to its roots, and has become 
 a representative in this, not only of the cities that 
 denied and pursued him, but of all the houses and syna- 
 gogues which he taught in. The grave from which 
 he raised Lazarus by his power is level with the sod ; 
 
50 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 and its lips, that were parted once as those of no other 
 grave had been, have closed again in dumb forgetfnl- 
 ness. The sea whose sweeping storm he stayed, and 
 on whose rushing waves he walked, has kept no image 
 of his Divine mien impressed 'upon its mobile mirror; 
 and the hills beside Bethany retain no monument, as the 
 skies overhead retain no trace, of that illustrious and 
 prophetic Ascension which made them once so heaven- 
 ly bright. It is all to show that Christianity is uni- 
 versal ; that every house of human dwelling may be 
 Christ's house ; that every grave may be like Lazarus' ; 
 and every spot where the Christian dies be the scene 
 of a new and real ascension. 
 
 It is not improper, I think, to suppose that God has 
 allowed, in order to this, the land of Palestine to be 
 possessed by the stranger almost ever since the foun- 
 dation of the Church ; to be defiled by idolatries, and 
 scarred by violence ; the mosque to be builded on the 
 site of the Temple ; the ploughshare to be driven over 
 palaces and streets ; the every association of sacredness 
 to be trampled out and rooted up, if that were possi- 
 ble, from the rocks and the soil. It is that thus may 
 be complete the great spiritual lesson, that Christianity 
 is a system divine and universal ; not dependent on 
 places, not limited by times ; that it goes in its entire- 
 ness wherever it goes ; and that every spot is as fit an 
 arena for it, on every spot which God hath made its 
 temples may as appropriately be built, as in the land 
 which heard its first utterance. I think that only here 
 do we penetrate the mystery of God's dealings with 
 that land. I know that only here do we apprehend 
 the nature, and compass the scope, of the Christian 
 economy. 
 
 And yet while this is certainly true, it cannot be 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 51 
 
 doubted that in all times, and under the purest light 
 of the Scriptures, there have been impulses in the minds 
 of believers toward the worship of God in particular 
 places; there has been a practical and an abiding impres- 
 sion that in certain scenes, and on the occasions appro- 
 priate to them, He is specially present, and that there 
 His blessing may more hopefully be sought. Ignorance 
 has perverted this natural impulse ; and a crafty super- 
 stition has sometimes so transformed it into a lie that 
 men have recoiled from that into skepticism ; the denial 
 of the instinct which was so misinterpreted. But still it 
 has recovered, and has shown itself again ; and even the 
 warmest Christian hearts have often been most aware 
 of its presence. The Scriptures themselves do plainly 
 favor it ; and by their representations of God in His 
 relation to the Sanctuary, and by the importance they 
 everywhere attach to the ordinances and ministries of 
 a pre-arranged worship in His house on the Sabbath, 
 they justify the belief that He is in some sense there 
 specially present ; that He may be there, more hope- 
 fully than elsewhere, approached with prayer. There 
 must be, then, some fact beneath this ; some valid law 
 in the Divine administration which gives importance to 
 such suggestions ; and it is worth our while to investi- 
 gate this. We can find it, if we try. 
 
 Certainly, it is not that God is personally present at 
 any point in distinction from others, and in exclusion 
 of them ; or that He is present at any one point in 
 more of His essential glory than He wears at all others ; 
 for everywhere through the universe, at all times, He 
 is present, in all His perfection. His omniscience. His 
 omnipotence, the requirements of His government, 
 the descriptions of the Scriptures, all compel us to 
 admit this. It is an indisputable deduction from His 
 
52 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 infinitude ; and to doubt or deny it were virtually to 
 adopt the very principle of Atheism. The melting 
 cloud dissolving in the sunset, the misty star-dust fleck- 
 ing the skies, in those as here, and everywhere else, 
 He is supremely, evermore present. 
 
 Nor is it the fact that God, though present, will not 
 •hear and answer the prayer that is offered, or the 
 praises that are sung, from another than the appointed 
 or customary place ; that He will not hear the humblest 
 cry, from any point, in the midst of civilization or re- 
 mote and storm-girt, where the shipwrecked mariner 
 lies down to die, where the wandering traveller spreads 
 his tent for the night. The goodness, wisdom, 
 holiness of God, the perfection of His government, as 
 well as the facts of human experience, all show that 
 He is graciously present with every human soul that 
 seeks Him. It is our privilege undoubtingly to believe 
 this. The driving scud, pierced but by lightnings, the 
 splintered wreck, tossed seething over rocks, from these 
 one may pray, to a throne just as near, for an answer 
 as prompt, as if from the nave of oldest temples, or by 
 the most hallowed fiireside shrine. 
 
 Least of all is it the fact that any House which men 
 have builded is in any, the least conceivable degree, 
 more acceptable in itself to Him who is eternal than 
 any other, more plain and humble ; that any arches 
 can be piled to such height, or any ornaments be so 
 gracefully and sumptuously clustered upon them, that 
 He shall be pleased with them in distinction from others; 
 that any majesty of proportions, any carefulness of 
 detail, or any solemnities in the form of consecration, 
 can so set apart one building from others, that He who 
 fiUeth immensity with His presence shall make that 
 His peculiar dwelling. His omnipresence. His eternal 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 53 
 
 and cabsolute spirituality, the whole idea of His being 
 and character, repulse us from this. TVe hioio it is 
 not true. 
 
 But the fact which the Scriptures do imply and 
 present, and which is consonant with all our experience, 
 is this : that God in the enlightening and renovating 
 influence of His Holy Spirit, for communion with His 
 people, and the highest advancement of their spiritual 
 welfare, is in a special sense present in the assembly, 
 where they have met to pray to and to praise Him ; 
 He is so present there that His influence for good is 
 there likeliest to be met ; and it is the pre-eminent 
 privilege of His people to come there to meet Him. 
 Not in the House, as a material building ; that is either 
 the heathen fable, or the ancient and typical Mosaic 
 provision, ordained for certain national and temporary 
 purposes. But in the assembly, the worshipping Con- 
 gregation, there at last the presence of God is the 
 Christian fact. "Ye," says the Apostle, "YE are the 
 temple of the living God 1" Not the stones of the edi- 
 fice, cemented and clamped, but the souls of the worship- 
 pers, knit together through faith ; not groined roofs 
 and echoing aisles, but seeking spirits, and the minds 
 that look upward ; — there is henceforth the shrine of 
 the Infinite. Let us notice this a little. 
 
 You observe, to remove a preliminary objection 
 which sometimes may not unnaturally arise, that it 
 is not in any degree derogatory to the true 
 
 AND perfect glory OF GOD, TO SUPPOSE HIM THUS PRES- 
 ENT PECULIARLY AND STATEDLY IN THE ASSEMBLY. It 
 
 does not limit His being at all ; it does not confine His 
 ubiquitous energy, or in any degree lay restraint on 
 His grace. It simply implies, if it be true, that for 
 specific and eminent purposes, for the perfecting of 
 
54 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 his Church, and the more effectual bringing of men 
 to the Is:nowledge of himself, he limits the usual ex- 
 pressions of his grace to the gathered Assembly ; that 
 he requires a fit condition to the bestowment of his 
 gifts, and dispenses those gifts at times, and through 
 channels, adapted to secure to them the largest effi- 
 ciency, and the widest distribution. He does this in tem- 
 poral things. He may do it surely in spiritual things. 
 It implies no reproach on his wisdom and grace, no re- 
 striction of his presence, no reduction of his power, if 
 he manifests himself, when an end is to be gained by 
 it, more brightly than elsewhere in such solemn Assem- 
 blies. To suppose- him careful of buildings or of sites 
 would be derogatory to his august majesty. But no 
 spot comes on all his glory — however the loose senti- 
 mentalist may hint it — no shadow is cast on God's 
 infinite height and plenitude of prerogative, from 
 the fact, if it be such, that he peculiarly manifests 
 himself, for instruction and quickening, where a 
 gathered Congregation waits to receive him. This is 
 according to his wisdom and glory, and is not even 
 apparently opposed to them. 
 
 You observe too, still further, that this is directly 
 and positively adapted to certain constitutional ten- 
 dencies IN the soul ; so that, considering these alone, 
 and holding at the same time plainly in mind the end 
 which God proposes to gain, it seems natural to antici- 
 pate that he should connect with such an Assembly the 
 special manifestations of his power and grace. A mo- 
 ment's thought will present this to us. 
 
 It is one rule of our mental operation that moral 
 impressions are most freely and powerfully made on the 
 soul in connection tuithtJie excitement of the social sym- 
 pathies^ the awakening and replenishing of the affection- 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 55 
 
 ate nature ; and tliat so whatever would address most 
 directly and effectually our thought and emotion, and 
 impel us most certainly to a specified course of action, 
 must reach us through these, and not through a mere 
 intellectual excitation. 
 
 The intellect itself will act more vigorously, with 
 larger range and a more vivid insight, when the heart 
 warms the judgment ; when the quick social nature sheds 
 a glow over the mind. This is energized and inspired by 
 the enthusiasm of that. It becomes winged and intui- 
 tive, not plodding and prosaic, when the fire of that 
 has been infused into it. So the moral sense is made 
 clearer in its convictions, and more vigorous, prompt, 
 and determinate in its action, the whole soul in a 
 word becomes charged with a more electric vitality, is 
 more thoroughly alive and nobly active, when this re- 
 sponsive and sympathetic constitution has been roused 
 to free though quiet movement. — ^This cannot be 
 doubted. We have felt it to be true ; and if we had 
 not, the records of monasticism, in the very mental 
 deterioration which they show, and the still more fla- 
 grant moral degradation, would suffice to declare it. 
 The views we gain will always be cleared, our percep- 
 tion of the higher and invisible realities will be noblest 
 and most animating, our emotion in regard to them 
 most appropriate and impelling, when the social affec- 
 tions which unite us with our fellows, and which are to 
 the unimpassioned intellect as light and as warmth, are 
 in freest activity. 
 
 Yet again, too, as plainly, it is a law of our mental 
 operation, that that which is invisible and above our 
 comprehension, can be realized to us best by being asso- 
 ciated with tliat ivhicli is visible^ and which so appeals 
 to the soul through the senses. 
 
 We are not infinite, though we are spiritual. We are 
 
56 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 not spiritual, save in soul ; and the body has constant and 
 intimate relations to the mind and its movements. We 
 work therefore, necessarily, under the forms and within 
 the limits of the finite, and the present : and it is only 
 through these, as if locating the illimitable, and making 
 definite to our apprehension the unseen and everlasting, 
 that we can rise to the attainment or mastery of them. 
 " A thousand years are with God as one day." These 
 are the measures of Time and the Earth. They are 
 caught from the trifling procedures of history. They 
 cannot in the strict sense be predicated of God, without 
 absurdity. — And yet they are needful to give us the 
 least consistent idea of God's eternity. We think of 
 the Universe, with its definite though to us unattainable 
 bounds, when we try to imagine his omnipresence. 
 These are the ladders, along which we climb, to reach, 
 if we may, the inaccessible glory. They are the natural 
 material media, the glasses of vision, the instruments 
 of thought, by means of which we arise to survey the 
 unlimited. — And so with God's presence, in the manifes- 
 tation of His power and grace. If we thought of this 
 everywhere, and at no point in particular, we should 
 speedily cease to think of it at all. Dissipating over the 
 earth this presence of the Highest, we should lose the 
 sense of its realness at any place. It is by concentrating 
 that presence in our thoughts, by bringing it into the 
 definite limits, not necessarily of sites, but of services and 
 assemblies, that we conceive of it vividly, and are im- 
 pressed with its verity. And then it is natural to conceive 
 of it everywhere. 
 
 Apply, then, these principles, which come from the 
 very constitution of the soul, and which therefore 
 naturally govern its activity, to the point before 
 us, viz., the special presence of God, in the manifes- 
 tation of His energy and grace, in the Christian 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 57 
 
 Assembly. Remember that the end to be gained by 
 Him is, the bringing the personal spirit of man into 
 immediate communion with Himself; the familiarizing 
 us with His being and glory ; the making us recipients 
 of His spiritual gifts. It is an end which, as related 
 merely to the faculty and force of the soul, is vast and 
 difficult : unspeakably more so than to bring one to 
 comprehend all the grandeur of the Creation. It is an 
 end, too, to which the heart is not inclined ; to the 
 accomplishment of which its depravity and selfishness 
 present permanent obstacles. How then shall it be 
 effected ? How, unless the principles I have rapidly 
 referred to be brought to assist ; unless not only the 
 power of habit, but the quickening force of social sym- 
 pathy, and that native and normal and subtile facility 
 with which the soul arises from the things which are 
 present and seen, to that which remains eternal and in- 
 visible — unless all these are made available to bring to 
 us the knowledge of God, and to lift us up toward 
 union with Him ? And how shall this be, except God 
 be, in very deed, in a special sense present, by the in- 
 fluence of His spirit, and in the expressions and signs 
 of His grace, in the Assembly where His people have 
 met? 
 
 Surely, my friends, if we think with attention of the 
 nature of the soul, and of its moral relations to God, 
 especially if we think of it in connection with the end 
 thus proposed to be gained for it, we shall perceive 
 that while in no sense derogatory to God, it is in all 
 respects agreeable to the laws of the mind which He has 
 formed, and to which now He would manifest Himself, 
 that He should thus express Himself to men, with 
 peculiar fulness, in an eminent degree, in the Assembly 
 for prayer. To our highest devotion, our clearest 
 • 5 
 
58 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 knowledge, our most iDfluential and decisive activity, 
 we need these ' set and awful times ' between Him 
 and ourselves. We need to view him in the centrality 
 of the Temple, in order that we may view Him in the 
 reaches of the universe. We need to see Him amid His 
 people, that we may see Him on His throne, exalted 
 among the angels, in the light inapproachable. 
 
 And still further you will observe how fully the 
 Scriptures warrant us in believing that God is thus, in a 
 specific and limited but still a real sense, present pecu- 
 liarly in the Assembly of Christians. I have spoken 
 already of the Hebrew economy ; and that was only pro- 
 phetic and anticipatory of a broader truth to be realized 
 in the Christian. Let us then for a moment revert to it,. 
 
 " They have seen thy goings, God," says the Psalm- 
 ist, ''even the goings of my God, my King, in the 
 Sanctuary." " Lift up your heads, ye gates; and be 
 ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors," sang the singers 
 of Israel at the solemn dedication, "and the King of 
 glory shall come in." " Who is this King of glory ? " 
 was the response that rolled back from the cloud of the 
 worshippers on the opposite hill. " The Lord, mighty 
 and strong ; the Lord, mighty in battle." And then 
 again arose the chorus: "Lift up your heads, ye 
 gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors ; and the 
 King of glory shall come in ;" — shall come that He may 
 meet His people, and that their hearts may shine in 
 His presence. "Now when Solomon had made an end 
 of praying, the fire came down from Heaven, and con- 
 sumed the burnt-offering and the sacrifices ; and the 
 glory of the Lord filled the house ; and the priests could 
 not enter into the house of the Lord, because the glory of 
 the Lord had filled the house." So when Moses had 
 finished the work of the Tabernacle, the record is. 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 59 
 
 " Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, 
 and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle : and 
 Moses was not able to enter into the tent, because the 
 cloud abode thereon." So in the year when king 
 Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord in a vision, seated 
 ' upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled 
 the Temple.' And so before Ezekiel, the house was 
 filled with the heavenly cloud ; and the courts were 
 full of the brightness of the Lord's glory ; till he fell 
 on his face in fear and awe. 
 
 Now what is all this, this visible apparatus of 
 descent and manifestation, this filling of the house with 
 cloud and brightness, this crowning the building with a 
 sensible splendor, but just the august and amazing sym- 
 bolic show through which the Lord would indicate the 
 truth, and impress it on the Hebrews, that there He 
 was to answer and bless them, as year by year they 
 were gathered to meet Him ? And what was this but 
 a prophecy of what should be, when the Temple itself 
 should have vanished away, when the sacrifice should 
 no more need to be offered, but when the worship 
 there inaugurated should still go on, in humbler forms 
 and in more modest sanctuaries, throughout the World ? 
 What was physical then, is spiritual now ; but as real 
 it is as though no chasm of years intervened. Their 
 privilege is ours, only broadened and brightened, as 
 well as their duty. 
 
 So afterward, therefore, when the Apostles were 
 assembled, and had prayed for the Spirit — though it 
 was but in a chamber that they were gathered, and the 
 temple, with marble walls and roof arising on Moriah 
 and pointing upward its spikes of gold, was shut to 
 their entrance, — the Dlace was shaken beneath and 
 about them, and they were filled with the power from 
 
60 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 on high. The Saviour had promised to his disciples, 
 as among the chiefest and grandest of their privileges, 
 that He would be with them to the end of the world ; 
 and that wherever two or three were assembled in His 
 name, He would be present to own and bless. And 
 through the unfolding Christian history, subsequent to 
 his resurrection and ascension, we have the bright ful- 
 filment of the promise, and find that wherever his peo- 
 ple were gathered there was his shrine, his place of 
 most glorious manifestation. 
 
 The new dispensation thus answers to the old, with 
 only a higher and more spiritual completion of what 
 was then typical. Here is the point at which they in- 
 terlink, the one with the other ; not in the outward and 
 perishable Building, but in the Assembly of intelligent 
 souls, is now and henceforth the residence of the High- 
 est. The whole tenor of the Scripture shows God to 
 have still, as He has had from the first, a place of pecu- 
 liar manifestation. But with the new and more ample dis- 
 pensation, it is Ye who are his, and who meet to praise 
 him, Ye are the Temple ; and He shall dwell and walk 
 in you ; and the Spirit of light shed abroad in your 
 hearts, that shall be the perpetual Shekinah ! 
 
 I have only to add, then, in one word, further, that 
 what is thus consonant with the nature and character 
 of Jehovah himself, as well as with aptitudes and laws 
 of the soul, and what is so manifestly promised, fore- 
 shadowed and fulfilled in the Scriptures, has to us that 
 verity which comes with experience. We have felt it 
 to be true. 
 
 Not that we have seen God, in physical apparition, 
 upholding or overpowering the souls of his people ; 
 not that we have marked the unincorporate glory 
 making the faces of the Christian Assembly resplendent 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 61 
 
 with its brightness, or have heard the voice that holds 
 worlds on its accents rolling in calm and' harmonious 
 thunders through sermon and song, and the utterance 
 of prayer; but that we have perceived and felt our- 
 selves nearer to God, in the vision of his character, 
 in the luminous and broad comprehension of his plans, 
 and in spiritual sympathies with Him and his will, 
 when gathered with his people, than at any other 
 time ; have so perceived and felt this nearness as to 
 place the matter beyond our doubt that there was an 
 objective and permanent reality, giving validity to the 
 experience ; that it was not a matter of mere imagina- 
 tion, a purely subjective and mental aspiration, but 
 that God was there with us, as not elsewhere. We 
 have recognized His uplifting and purifying influence, 
 on our desires, our hopes, our thoughts. We have had 
 sublime personal intercourse with Him, in prayer and 
 in praise. The mists have seemed to roll away, the visi- 
 ble walls to sever and part, till we saw almost the pil- 
 lars of His palace, and knew how glorious and how vast 
 is His home. And it has been with the light we have 
 carried from thence that our houses and hearts have 
 long been bright ! The clearest knowledge, the warm- 
 est love, the most exalted inspiring hope, the charity 
 that was born in us by a touch of His spirit, the faith 
 that looks serenely at death, and welcomes the grave as 
 a gateway to Heaven — these all have been born in us, 
 not in one Building in distinction from others, but in 
 the place where Christians meet, and where, because 
 they thus meet there, we have found His very sanctuary 
 and seat ! I need but suggest this to recall it to your 
 minds, and to show the brilliant testimony it pours on 
 the point we are considering. It is too bright to be 
 obscured. 
 
62 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 It is a truth, then, shown us by all this, that God 
 is everywhere especially present in the Assemblies of 
 His children, there to exhibit his power and grace ; 
 that there He may be met as not elsewhere ; and that 
 though always He hears the soul that cries unto him, 
 from amid what darkness and loneliness soever, of 
 the forest, the dungeon, or the chamber of poverty, of 
 the mountain-crest that greets the morning, or the 
 spar that tosses drearily on the wave, yet in the As- 
 sembly where his people are gathered his grace is 
 seen oftenest, and that there his power is most grandly 
 displayed. Not curious marbles, but conscious spirits, 
 these are His dwelling. The gathering of the saints 
 attracts Him more than cedar floors and silken veils, 
 with stones cut in lily-work, and walls overlaid with 
 plates of gold ! " Ye are the Temple;" and no longer 
 is it the building. 
 
 But, my friends, if this be so, what a privilege to 
 MEET with the PEOPLE OF GoD ! This is the thought that 
 springs first from the theme ! " Blessed are they that 
 dwell in Thy courts," said the Psalmist of old; " they 
 will still be praising Thee ! " Not they who are there 
 for an occasion, for an hour, and then are absent 
 for weeks together ; not they who are there for the 
 morning only, but who dare not face the distance or 
 the heats of the after meridian ; not they who are 
 there when their pastor is to preach, but are hither 
 and yon, in the streets, or at home, Avhen a stranger 
 takes his place; but they who dwell in the house of 
 the Lord ; who are planted and set there in the vital 
 hold of affectionate familiarity ; who are there on each 
 Sabbath, as each secular day at the place of their busi- 
 ness ; who are there through the day, for communion 
 with the Highest ; who can extract some nourishment 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 63 
 
 of thought, some glimpse of duty, at least some legacy 
 of godly patience, from even a discourse that is not all 
 on fire ; who feel that hearing is not their whole work, 
 but that they are in the Assembly as in a shrine, to have 
 there personal conference with God, and to bare their 
 bosoms to the silent and mighty inrush of the Spirit! 
 
 Blessed are they who do thus dwell in this house of the 
 Lord ; for there, in more than royal presence, they have 
 their home. The Almighty shall there reveal Himself 
 to them. They shall have views of his power and 
 Himself, of his plan of Redemption and his thoughts 
 for the world, of his might and his grace, and his wis- 
 dom to save, which, outside the waiting and praising 
 Assembly, they must search for in vain. They come 
 there unto His throne on earth ; and, to the eye that 
 spiritually discerns, their gathering, humble though it 
 may seem, is overhung with the terrors, and splen- 
 dors, and the grace of the Infinite ! — Indeed, my friends 
 if we felt rightly, we should be sure that no one place 
 this side of Heaven is so majestic, precious, charming, 
 as that Yvdiere Christians meet the Lord ! For what are 
 all congresses of nobles and kings to this audience of 
 Him who made the worlds ; and in the knowledge and 
 love of whom, as surely as the soul is immortal, stand- 
 eth for each eternal life ! 
 
 And, Secondly, how plainly does our subject sug- 
 gest to us the TRUE USE, and the proper consideration 
 OF A House of Worship ; of the edifice itself, in which 
 such Assemblies of believers are gathered. 
 
 It is not altogether common, precisely like other 
 and secular buildings, a mere material, perishable 
 fabric, to be used and forgotten. In one sense, indeed 
 it is just this. It is a building, like others, of brick or 
 of stone, with the iron that binds or the mortar that 
 cements them. It must be patiently reared, like others, 
 
64 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 by human hands. It will decay as others do, under the 
 influence of nature and time, or by the crushing stroke 
 of casualty. It is a building for a definite purpose, 
 and a means to its accomplishment ; and there is no 
 sacredness built in along its courses, and no divine vir- 
 tue distributed through its walls. We cannot say that 
 there God is, except as there His people meet. 
 
 But from its purpose, it gains importance. As the 
 place where the Christian Assembly convenes to confront 
 the Eternal, and where He shows himself as He does not 
 elsewhere, the very building takes upon it solemnity 
 and impressiveness. There becomes inevitably associ- 
 ated with it a kind of sacredness. It is not common 
 and ordinary to one who realizes what takes place with- 
 in it. The real theophanies which there have been made 
 to humbled, touched, believing spirits, have left the 
 traces to the mind, not the eye, of a radiance supernal 
 along the arches. The experience of those who have 
 there devoted themselves to God, and have become His 
 sons and heirs, the children of immortal light, more 
 than peers of the angelic powers — this gives the very 
 house an interest that makes it seem to reflect a gleam 
 from the sapphire walls ! The prayers that have been 
 uttered there, and that there have brought back a re- 
 sponse from the skies, the thought of them wraps even 
 pillars and pews with a palpable solemnity, and a glo- 
 rious beauty. The praises that there have risen as in- 
 cense, rolling out from full hearts that only waited for 
 heavenly harps to add new triumphs to heavenly choirs, 
 they linger still, long after their audible echoes have 
 passed, on the air of the house. Their spirit speaks 
 through the pipes that are dumb. GOD has been there, 
 in manifest presence, till souls were bowed and bright 
 before Him ! If the chiselled stone should cry out of 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 65 
 
 the wall, and the beam out of the timber should an- 
 swer it, their voices would tell of the consciousness of 
 Christians that showed the Lord revealed in might ; of 
 the steppings of the Most High amid the souls of the 
 worshippers ! And as one could not stand to-day upon 
 Mount Sinai — blasted and torn as its granite has been, 
 by lightning and by earthquake — -without some sense 
 of the solemnity of the place where God descended 
 among His angels, so, in His house, the thoughtful 
 mind will feel itself solemnized as often as it enters. 
 
 The house should therefore harmonize in its struc- 
 ture with these associations. However simple, it should 
 yet be distinctive ; not brilliant with color, and gaily 
 decorated, yet not too common and poor of aspect ; 
 not a place to be confounded with multitudes of others ; 
 lofty, if possible, that by the aspiring swell of its pil- 
 lars it may lift upward the thoughts and desires; so 
 firm-based and solid that it shall transmit a long his- 
 tory of blessings, and gather associations with each 
 generation. It should be kept for religious uses ; and 
 not be opened, any further than is necessary, for objects 
 merely secular and earthly in their relations. It should 
 be cherished, in the thoughts of the worshippers, as a 
 place set apart for communion with the Highest ; even 
 children being trained to thus honor and revere it ; the 
 hat being lifted, and the step becoming softer, as one 
 enters its courts ; the soul recognizing in it the very 
 beauteous wondrous Home, in which it has its nearest 
 fellowship with Him whom the Universe cannot con- 
 tain ; with Him before whom the globe is an atom, 
 swinging pendulous in the floods of His light. 
 
 Such an edifice becomes almost a living source of 
 moral culture, of spiritual progress, in any community. 
 The hearts that turn to it with affection and delight 
 
66 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 grow ever more numerous as the years pass along. And 
 the mantle of roses and vines that covers it does but 
 image that thick array of memories which God's great 
 record of souls shall show hereafter to envelope and 
 clothe it ! It shall be to many the portal of Paradise. 
 And yet always we must remember that the value 
 of the house is not intrinsic. It is borrowed from the 
 Assembly, and does not surpass or outlast that. That 
 is the real Temple, with the still .present word, and the 
 living Shekinah ; and so each scene of such Assembly 
 takes dignity from it. The noblest edifice, where that is 
 not, is never God's house. In Roman catacombs, where 
 the hunted disciples chanted their worship while the 
 sword of the emperors, from Nero to Dioclesian, was 
 flaming above them, and where they wrought on every 
 corner, and along each narrow and darkened passage, 
 the symbol of the Cross and the monogram, of Christ ; 
 in the clefts of the hills, where often Piedrnontese and 
 Waldensian believers met secretly for prayer, and read 
 God's word by flickering torches, whose blaze was re- 
 flected from snow-wreath and from glacier; among 
 the mossy glens of Scotland, where stones were the 
 benches, and the babble of the brook gave the har- 
 mony to the song ; on the crest of some fresh coral 
 reef, or of some crusted arctic isle, where men with 
 tears and prayers and praise lay down their dead ; on 
 the bleak coasts of Plymouth, amid the shivering win- 
 try pines that first heard the war-whoop exchanged 
 for the psalm ; or in the forests where here was read 
 God's holy word while still this metropolis was in its 
 first germ ; wherever the Assemblies of His people 
 have been, there hath been still the House of God ; 
 encompassed by angels ; filled with the Spirit ; grander 
 than all the rock-built temples; as wonderful, signal, 
 as Tabor itself! 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. G7 
 
 And, on the other hand, where these Assemblies 
 have not been, no outward building hath drawn to it- 
 self God's favor and grace ! Men have tried sometimes 
 to rear such buildings, so haughty and so charming, 
 that the Christian Congregation should not be needed 
 to make them God's houses. Aisles have been made to 
 stretch in front their lofty march of pillars and of roof; 
 arches to lift, in stately pride, their lyric spring or 
 rhythmic round, with wreathing monuments clustered 
 upon them ; windows to blush in every tint that can 
 brightly set forth a Christian fact ; and towers to soar, 
 aerial, mighty, as if they vv^ould carry on their lofty 
 aspiration the very soul to the skies ; — and then great 
 musical artists have been brought to make the edifice 
 resound with their triumph ; and the masters of color 
 have vied with the experts in architecture and song, 
 suspending along the massive walls their rarest tro- 
 phies, and making the cathedral the magnificent the- 
 atre of their rich art ; — and all hath not made it the 
 House of the Lord! Never by art or skill of man doth 
 it become such ; never by splendid and orderly conse- 
 cration. Only by the meeting of the Christian Assem- 
 bly within those walls are they dignified by another 
 relation to God than that which they had when they 
 lay in the quarry ; or that which they shall have when 
 violence or time hath again thrown them down ! 
 
 Oh ye, my friends, who have reared this House, so 
 tasteful, ample, beautiful as it is, symmetrical in pro- 
 portion, replete with all the appliances of convenience, 
 who look to-day with joy and thankfulness on your 
 work done, and who set it apart with prayer and with 
 song as an offering to God — remember that ye are the 
 temple after all, amid which God walks if He walks 
 here at all, within which He dwells if He hath here 
 
68 THE ASSEMBLY OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 a dwelling ! Oh, then, become yourselves a Temple, 
 better, grander, more charming, more precious, than 
 this ye have reared ! Let your confirmed, exalted souls 
 be nobler than its walls ; your graces of character more 
 lovely than its colors ; your purposes more high, your 
 hopes more steadfast, than its rock-based and rising 
 tower! Let no defective beams or pillars be found 
 among you ; fair outwardly in aspect, but eaten through 
 inwardly with the dry-rot of selfishness ! Let no one 
 stone, in all this living, spiritual edifice, be imperfectly 
 cemented in the fellowship of faith ! Let no Assembly 
 ever meet here, of which you shall not be able to say 
 as you go hence, "Lo, that was holy; for God was 
 there ! " So shall you be indeed a temple of God's 
 own building! And so shall this, your outward house, 
 become to you more precious ever, with every babe 
 baptized here, and every supper celebrated here, with 
 every soul converted to God, and every prayer that 
 gains His blessing ; till you are called to go up higher ! 
 There all such buildings and services will be ended, 
 being needed no more ! It is the grand felicity of 
 Heaven, — and this is the remark with which I close — 
 it is the fact which opens more brightly before our 
 thoughts than almost any other its ineffable glory 
 that there no Temple shall be needed ; for there, at 
 last, we shall see God. We shall be filled with all His 
 fulness ; shall be partakers of His own nature ! The 
 Assembly, it shall be perpetual there ; the great con- 
 gregation of the ransomed First-Born ! The glory of 
 God, it shall flood every soul, and dwell within it in 
 constant brightness ! And so the Universe shall become 
 to us a Temple ! Omnipresence itself shall there be 
 our shrine ! Oh what a heisrht of liberation and attain- 
 ment is revealed to us in this I What a change in our 
 
THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 69 
 
 state ! What a change in our powers ! And how do all 
 the lesser images, the golden streets, the gates of pearl, 
 the thrones of jasper, crystal seas — how do these in- 
 stantly fade and fail before this great illustrious fact ; 
 that there the Lord becomes the Temple, and we no 
 longer need another! — God help us now to use aright 
 these lower shrines, and then to enter that grand sphere 
 where all abroad we meet His glory, unveiled, supreme, 
 in perfect light ; and unto Him be all the praise ! 
 
III. 
 
 PREACHING THE GOSPEL THE GRAX 
 FUNCTION OF THE JIINISTER. 
 
 V 
 JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D., 
 
 PASTOE 07 THE BEOADWAY TABERNACLE CHUEOII, if. -J. 
 
SERMON". 
 
 Christ sent me not to haptize, hut to preach the Gospel : not 
 with tvisdom of tvords, lest the Cross of Christ should he made of 
 none effect. For the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish, 
 foolishness ; hut unto us which are saved, it is the power of God, — 
 1 Cor. i:17, 18. 
 
 " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preacTi the 
 Gospel;" — but did not Christ himself say, in his last 
 command, " Go, teach all nations, haj)tizing them m the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost ?" And would Paul undervalue that ordinance 
 which is a symbol of the Christian faith, which Christ 
 himself instituted, and associated with preaching, in 
 the mission of his disciples to all the world ? 
 
 " Not with wisdom of speech ;" — but did not Christ, 
 when he sent forth his disciples as preachers, bid them 
 " be tuise as serpents ?" And does not Paul elsewhere 
 speak of his own preaching as "warning every man 
 and teaching every man in all luisdom ? " Did he mean 
 to disparage that philosophical habit of thought, that 
 dialectic skill, that rhetorical glow and rhythm, that 
 union of Hebraistic and Grecian culture, which render- 
 ed his own mind, when renovated and purified by the 
 6 
 
74 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 Spirit, the fittest mould in which to run the great ar- 
 gument of the Gospel for all after times ? 
 
 Paul undervalues neither the ordinances and liturgy 
 of Christianity, nor the tidaptation of philosophy and 
 of art to its service; the Symbolical, the Liturgical, 
 the Esthetic, the Philosophical, the Rhetorical, have 
 each their place. He extols the office of preaching re- 
 latively, but not exclusively ; this, and not ordinances ; 
 this, and not speculative philosophy ; this, and not 
 the forms of worship or the arts of speech, constituted 
 the stress of his mission as an apostle. " Christ sent 
 me not to bajDtize, but to preach the Gospel ;" — that 
 which He put foremost in my commission was not the 
 administration of the symbols of his grace, but the 
 proclamation of that grace itself, through his Cross. 
 
 The fact or principle which underlies this declara- 
 tion is, that Preaching tJie Gospel is the 'preeminent and 
 comprehensive function of the Christian ministry • — the 
 agency for propagating Christianity^ to which all else 
 is subordinate and subsidiary. 
 
 Let us endeavor, therefore, to fix the relative value 
 of the preaching of the Gospel, and of those various 
 accessories of Christianity which contribute to its illus- 
 tration, to its difiusion, or to its permanent embodiment 
 as a system of belief and worship ; and also, to ascer- 
 tain what are those qualities and forces which give to 
 preaching its preeminence for maintaining and extend- 
 ing Christianity in the Avorld. With a view to such a 
 contrast, the accessories of Christianity may be grouped 
 under the Symbolical, the Ritualistic, and the Esthetic. 
 
 I. Of the Symbolical. We cannot deny that this 
 belongs to the Christian system, since Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper were instituted by Christ himself a§ per- 
 petual symbols of his doctrine and work. Neither can 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 75 
 
 we deny the moral value of symbols for instruction 
 and edification, unless we would repudiate the testi- 
 mony of our own natures, and the concurrent testimony 
 of the religions of all mankind, and impeach the wis- 
 dom of Him, who through ages indoctrinated by sym- 
 bols the Jewish mind to comprehend the atoning sac- 
 rifice of Christ. The well-appointed symbol, at once 
 expressive and suggestive, conveys to the heart through 
 the eye and the imagination, the truth which the doc- 
 trinal formula offers to the reason. The poet and the 
 painter, the priest and the pi'ophet, preach by symbol. 
 As you wander by torchlight through the vast and in- 
 tricate corridors of Death, which the pride and the 
 faith of Egypt combined to excavate in the rocks of 
 her deserts, you read upon their pictured and sculp- 
 tured walls a language that speaks to you of life, of 
 death, and of immortality. For when, having traced the 
 occupant of a tomb through the pictorial history of 
 his life and the impiessive incidents of death, having 
 seen the departed soul transported in the sacred boat 
 across the lake, and there cut off from all communica- 
 tion with this world, you behold above the sarcopha- 
 gus the radiant and winged globe, you feel that here 
 is the prophetic hope of ages uttered through the sub- 
 lime symbol of immortality. Your nature responds to 
 the thought and the hope which the hand of the sculp- 
 tor carved in the banks of the Nile, before Abraham 
 went clown into Egypt. 
 
 As you go back in imagination, and stand by the 
 side of Abel as he offers up the firstlings of his flock a 
 sacrifice ; as you stand a2:ain by the altar of burnt of- 
 fering which Noah built upon the earth just purified 
 by the flood ; as you go up with the Father of the Faith- 
 ful and the child of promise, from Hebron to Moriah, 
 
76 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 and there see Abraham bind his Isaac upon the altar ; 
 as again, in the wilderness of Sinai, you see Aaron in 
 his anointed robes, offering ever the same sacrifice of 
 the lamb ; as yet once more, you stand in the porch of 
 Solomon's Temple, on the great day of atonement, and 
 see the High Priest, with reverent tread, go up to the 
 Holy of Holies with this same oblation ; you feel that 
 this mute victim, all unconscious of its high intent, 
 preaches Christ crucified, to take away your sins. 
 
 You may not say that since this symbolic sacrifice 
 has been interpreted and superseded by the death 
 of Christ, it has no longer any meaning for you ; that 
 the Old Testament is of value only in its historical, de- 
 votional, and prophetic parts ; for the ceremonial law 
 and the typical sacrifice interpret to us the work of 
 Christ, even as his death consummated their meaning ; 
 and these prepared a language^ without which the doc- 
 trine of Atonement could never have been preached. 
 Now that this language, run into the mould of symbols 
 repeated age after age, has incorporated itself with 
 human thought and speech, those antique symbolic 
 moulds can be set aside. Yet must we needs preserve 
 them in the historical museum of our faith, that we 
 may trace and verify the ideas to which they have 
 given shape. 
 
 One of the most curious discoveries of Egyptology 
 is the transition from hieroglyphics to popular writing. 
 The hieroglyphic, which began in pure picture-writ- 
 ing, was the language of symbols ; it gave pictures 
 of ideas, and the art was said to have been derived 
 from the gods themselves. It was known as the sacred 
 writing, and its key was with the priests. Gradually 
 the symbols were made expressive of sound, and ceased 
 to be regarded as mere pictures. This widened the 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 77 
 
 domain of thought as represented by the hieroglyphics ; 
 and with this came such changes of form, as gradually 
 reduced the old sculptured pictures of ideas to a cur- 
 rent handwriting of words. The same lists of kings 
 sculptured on ancient monuments, are repeated in 
 written characters in the papyrus roll now at Turin ; 
 and these royal lists, laid side by side, illustrate the 
 transition from symbols to words. The Old Testament 
 is the hieroglyphic alphabet of the New, which the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews has translated for us, carrying 
 over its sacred thoughts into our common speech. 
 
 But while through the perfecting of a language for 
 Christianity, the use of symbols is greatly reduced and 
 modified, Christianity does not wholly dispense with 
 that power of teaching which lies in the relation of 
 symbols to the eye and the imagination. The Old 
 Testament alphabet was written largely in letters of 
 fire and blood. The New Testament has a symbolic 
 language in letters of gold, the meaning of Avhich it 
 hath not entered the heart of man to conceive. The 
 New Jerusalem, the sea of glass, the river of life, the 
 tree of life, the sapphire walls, the gates of pearl, the 
 harps and crowns of gold, can we interpret these till 
 we have learned that "new name," and are equal to the 
 angels in knowledge and in joy ? Let us not throw 
 away our alphabet too soon, lest we lose the very key 
 of our faith. 
 
 But Christianity in its administration also has its 
 symbols — the mute but eloquent and impressive teach- 
 ers of its doctrine. This alphabet has only two letters, 
 but these are Alpha and Omega. Baptism, " not the 
 literal putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the 
 answer of a good conscience towards God," which 
 makes the water the figure of our salvation ; and that 
 
78 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 Sacred Supper wherein we " show forth the Lord's 
 death till he come." Our faith does not stand in or- 
 dinances ; but rightly viewed, these ordinances of 
 Christ are exponents and teachers of that faith. 
 
 When Mr. Webster stood on Bunker Hill to com- 
 memorate the completion of that monument whose 
 corner-stone he had laid a quarter of a century before, 
 and tens of thousands thronged around him expectant 
 of an eloquence equal to his fame, he gazed long and 
 solemnly upon the granite shaft, and then broke silence 
 with these words : " It is not from my lips, it could not 
 be from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence 
 is this day to flow most competent to move and excite 
 the vast multitude around me. The powerful speaker 
 stands motionless before us." And were it so that the 
 eloquence which began to flow from this pulpit this 
 morning'"' should never cease, yet the most eloquent 
 and impressive sermons must ever come from that 
 Table where before your eyes, in the broken bread 
 and the cup poured out, Jesus Christ shall be " evi- 
 dently set forth, crucified among you." 
 
 But it is only as connected with Christ and his 
 Gospel that these symbols have any value or signifi- 
 cance ; and therefore should the administration of ordi- 
 nances be kept subordinate to the proclamation of 
 truth. Sacramental virtue they have none ; their moral 
 power for edification lies in their perceived relation to 
 the doctrine of Christ. Separate from this they are a 
 priestly mummery. Therefore the order of commis- 
 sion to the minister of the Gospel is not first Baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper in order to Christ, but first 
 Christ received by faith for the soul's renewal and re- 
 
 * Hc/e Professor Park's Sermon. 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 79 
 
 clemption, the water of Baptism signifying and sealing 
 that renewal, the Lord's Supper commemorating that 
 redemption and ratifying its covenant. 
 
 How little these ordinances alone can avail for the 
 spread of Christianity, the whole Eastern world, bur- 
 dened with the decay of ceremonial churches, bears 
 witness. When has the pomp of Sacraments in the 
 Greek, Latin, and Armenian Churches attracted a 
 Moslem to embrace Christianity ? When has Turk or 
 Fellah in Egypt been converted to the ordinances of 
 the Copt? Vain the chrism of baptism prepared and 
 applied by consecrated hands ; vain the mass by stoled 
 priest, with measured chaunt, and tinkling bell, and 
 swinging censer; Turk and Arab mutter "idolater," 
 and " unbelieving dog." But when the New Testa- 
 ment is circulated in the Turkish Empire, and mission- 
 aries of the Cross have gained a hearing, the converted 
 Moslem comes with the enlightened and regenerated 
 Armenian and Greek, to be baptized into one faith, and 
 to sit at one table, remembering and confessing Christ. 
 The Jesuit missionaries baptized by thousands the In- 
 dians of this continent, and erected crosses by every 
 road and wigwam ; but the war-whoop still summoned 
 hostile tribes, and the scalping knife offered bloody 
 sacrifices to the Great Spirit. But wherever Eliot, 
 and Brainerd, and Edwards, and their successors in 
 this apostleship, have won the hearts of the Red man 
 to Christ, there the sacraments of the Gospel have been 
 the sacraments of peace, and the regeneration of the 
 heart has led to the civilization of the tribe. Where 
 truth is present to the soul, the symbol may serve to 
 embody and transmit it — as the Heavenly Dove that 
 conveyed the Holy Spirit to Jesus at his baptism, still 
 hovers in the breath of sacred song. But symbols 
 
80 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 without the truth stifle the Gospel iu a "prisoned 
 pomp ;" — a religion of baptisms is at best a baptized 
 Paganism. Wherefore, " Christ sent me not to bap- 
 tize, but to preach the Gospel." 
 
 The same relative position must be assigned to the 
 Liturgical and the Esthetic^ in reference to Christian- 
 ity. These have a positive value so long as they are 
 held in a strictly normal place and use. While kept 
 subordinate to the Gospel they are also subsidiarij. 
 We cannot worship in an orderly manner without a 
 Liturgy ; a formula of worship understood in the con- 
 gregation. If, when we come together, " every one 
 hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a rev- 
 elation, hath an interpretation," — this is not worship 
 but confusion, and " God is not the author of confusion, 
 but of peace, as in all Churches [or assemblies] of the 
 saints. Let all things be done decently and in order." 
 But the scope and richness of the Christian Liturgy 
 cannot be restricted within any one form of human 
 composition. In this Liturgy we pray as our Lord 
 hath taught us, and we appropriate to our circumstan- 
 ces and wants the prayers of Abraham, and Moses, and 
 David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Daniel, and Peter, 
 and John, and the recorded utterances of pious hearts 
 in all ages, and that which is indited within us by the 
 Spirit sent forth into our hearts, crying, Abha^ Father. 
 The whole range of devotional expression, written and 
 unwritten, is before us when we join " with one ac- 
 cord in prayer and supplication." Our Christian Lit- 
 urgy embraces also the Psalms of David, and of Moses 
 the man of God; the hymns, ascriptions, and rhyth- 
 mical sentences of apostles, and martyrs, and confes- 
 sors; the hymns of all ages brought together "for 
 the service of sons: in the house of the Lord." And 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 81 
 
 with these prayers and hymns, and the whole Scrip- 
 tures open to us for selection and adaptation, we 
 have a Liturgy, which in scope, in beauty, in simplicity, 
 and in sublimity, is unrivalled by that of any other 
 religion. Such a Liturgy, arranged by rule or usage 
 in its several parts, answers our sense of propriety in 
 the worship of God, and the Divine canon of wor- 
 ship, " Let all things be done to edifying." It is an 
 adjunct of Christianity itself 
 
 But when the form of worship is made the thing of 
 chief account, when to read or say the prayer, to hear 
 or sing the tune, is regarded as of the essence of wor- 
 ship, then Religion degenerates into Ritualism, and has 
 no more vitality. The word of God overlaid with tra- 
 ditions of men, is made of none effect. 
 
 We may not deny that the Esthetic^ as well as the 
 Symbolical and Liturgical, has its uses in religion, unless 
 we would affirm that all taste is sinful, and that God 
 has given us the sense of beauty only as a snare. \Ye 
 may not deny the fitness of art in connection with 
 worship, unless we would impeach the wisdom of Him 
 who made in the mount the pattern of the Tabernacle, 
 and who hallowed the temple of Solomon with his 
 glory. The ceremonial sacredness of place no longer 
 exists under the dispensation of the Spirit. The wor- 
 ship of Cameronian and Pilgrim, under the open sky, 
 was even more sublime and more reverent before 
 God, than the cathedral service in full choir. Doubt- 
 less God may be acceptably worshipped in a barn ; but 
 it is not for us to worship in a barn, unless we are 
 willing also to sleep in a manger. The house cannot 
 sanctify the worship, but the spirit of piety will not 
 be careless of the place appropriated to the public 
 worship of God. If taste and devotion can here com- 
 
82 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 bine, if the feeling of reverence and the - sense of 
 beauty can find a common home and a common ex- 
 pression in the place of worship, Religion is thereby 
 helped, not hindered. The feeling which opposes 
 this or that style of architecture, this or that form of 
 adaptation in a house of worship, may be as truly a 
 superstition as is the feeling which invests that form 
 with sanctity. The Ecclesiologist and the Iconoclast 
 may here meet together. The religion which worships 
 the walls, and the religion which cannot worship with- 
 in them, are alike dead — the one petrified by means of 
 stone, the other petrified through fear of stone. Hap- 
 py is that combination in architecture, of the sentiment 
 of devotion and an elevated taste, which enables rfs to 
 say : " Our holy and beautiful house;" and shall lead 
 our children to say, " Our holy and our beautiful 
 house, where our fathers j^rmsec? Tliee^ 
 
 Whatever in art or in other externals is normal and 
 of true value, Christianity appropriates and subordi- 
 nates to its own uses. Whatever is perverted or ex- 
 treme, or would be made supreme as an end, it re- 
 jects. Ritual and architecture are valuable in religion 
 only as they are the outgrowth of the religious faith 
 and sentiment of a people themselves, and are strictly 
 subordinated to that faith and sentiment. They cannot 
 be used as converting ordinances, either for perpetuat- 
 ing Christianity or for propagating it in new regions. 
 Christian worship began in the Synagogue, the porch 
 of the Temple, the Upper Chamber, appropriating to 
 itself whatever lay open around it. Driven thence 
 into caves and catacombs, it there worshipped God out 
 of the deeps. Emerging from this obscurity to be 
 recognized and protected by the State, it appropriated 
 the Basilica, built for civic purposes, rejecting only 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 83 
 
 buildings ^Yl^ich had the associations of idolatiy. 
 And from this point it advanced to the control of all 
 art for its own service. But, meantime, Ritualism had 
 overshadowed the Gospel, and Ly degrees a Church 
 architecture adapted for ritualistic exhibition, over- 
 shadowed the Church and its worship. But you can 
 no more perpetuate Christianity by an architecture 
 which has usurped its place, than you can perpetuate 
 the life of a man by building his effigy in granite for 
 his sepulchre. You can no more perpetuate a living 
 church by the mere cost you pay for its material home, 
 than you can perpetuate the free and noble spirit of 
 Washington by paying the slave-trader's price for his 
 bones. 
 
 There is no vital force in the merely esthetic ele- 
 ment, to carry forth the Gosj^el into new regions. 
 Church architecture must invest a living Church, and 
 when that Church dies, the material structure is but a 
 mausoleum. In a suburb of Thebes, is a temple of 
 the old Egyptian worship, in remarkable preservation. 
 Its sculptured divinities still hold their court where 
 they have held it for four thousand years. Its mute 
 priests graven in the stone seem still to offer the wor- 
 ship of the Pharaohs. Within the area of this temjDle 
 are the pillars of a church, which in the fourth century 
 of our era, was here erected in visible triumph over 
 the old idolatry. But Pharaoh and Cassar have passed 
 away, and the rites of temple and church have long 
 ago ceased. And now what effect has the architecture 
 of ages gone, upon the Moslem Arabs of the neighbor- 
 ing village ? Are they awed by the dim mysteries of 
 Iris and Osiris which those temple-walls recall ? Are 
 they attracted to the faith of Constantino by the Greek 
 pillars of the falling church ? They worship Allah in 
 
84 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 a rude mud mosque, tliey pay their reverence at the 
 plastered tomb of a sheik, and use the fragments of 
 church and temple to build their hovels. What lesson 
 of religion does the Parthenon, all glorious in its ruin, 
 teach the Athenian of to-day ? Does the perfect art 
 of Phidias and the lavish taste of Pericles, win any to 
 the worship of Minerva ? The Parthenon, upon which 
 Socrates, and Demosthenes, and Paul had successively 
 looked, is a crumbling quarry of art ; but the voices 
 of Demosthenes and Paul still speak from the Bema 
 and the Areopagus, and the heroic virtue of Socrates 
 utters itself from his prison in that rock. Not even the 
 wizard wand of Scott could give life again to Melrose 
 and Holyrood, or make them other than moonlit sepul- 
 chres, with flitting shadows of their ancient faith ; 
 but the preaching of John Knox still stirs the heart of 
 Scotland, and gives vitality to her religion. 
 
 Art made subordinate to a living faith and express- 
 ing that faith in forms of truth and beauty, has a ser- 
 vice for religion which we may not despise. But the 
 faith departed, or become inoperative, the service of 
 art is also gone. It can neither perpetuate religion 
 nor recall it to life ; and neither upon its native soil 
 nor reproduced in other lands, neither in its own gen- 
 eration nor in those that follow after, can it do aught 
 to teach the truth it once embodied. Wherefore Christ 
 sent me not to build tabernacles, even after the pattern 
 shown in the mount, not to observe a ritual like that 
 o'iven to Aaron, not to administer the sacraments even 
 of the New Covenant, not to make religious art, or 
 religious services, or religious ordinances an end to be 
 attained, or an essential part of religion ; — but to 
 preach the Gospel. Neither Ecclesiology, nor Rubric- 
 ism, nor Ritualism should be the study and theme of 
 
THE GEAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 00 
 
 the minister of Christ, but Christ himself and Him 
 crucified. 
 
 II, Such being the established preeminence of 
 preaching above all the accessories of Christianity as a 
 system, we are prepared to estimate those qualities and 
 forces which give to the preached Gospel this grand 
 distinction in the Redeemer's plan for the renovation 
 of the world. 
 
 (1.) Tlie Gosjjel takes hold upon the innermost forces 
 of our heing, tvith the most intimate and comprehensive 
 adaptation and control • and the Gospel meets our inner- 
 most necessities^ luith the most circumstantial and ade- 
 qucde supp)ly. Ordinances, Liturgy, Art, approach the 
 soul through outward form and expression, speaking 
 to the eye and the ear. These kindle a fire of devotion 
 round about the man, seeking to encompass, and so to 
 pervade him with its warmth. But the Gospel addresses 
 at once i\\^ersonalitij of the man, which alone is per- 
 manent. It brings into the soul, though it be dead, 
 the truth which makes alive. The word of God enter- 
 inginto the heart, becomes a burning fire in the bones; 
 every fibre of the being is made alive with it; and 
 though all outward accessories and appliances of re- 
 ligion should fail, and the outer man perish in every 
 susceptibility to external influences, this truth within 
 would live by its own recuperative power, and would 
 give the inner man strength day by day. Said the 
 little Sabbath-school girl, when her Catholic parents, 
 instigated by the priest, had forbidden her the school, 
 and had taken away her New Testament : " You cannot 
 take away from me the verses that I have learned, nor 
 the Saviour I have in my heart." The pomp of cere- 
 mony, the sacramental virtues of the Church in which 
 she was born, had failed to teach, to guide, to sanctify, 
 
86 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 that tender soul. But the Grospel of the New Testa- 
 ment, entering her heart, had made that a temple 
 where Christ dwelt, and in that inner temple she could 
 worship without book, or altar, or priest. Said an aged 
 believer, whom the world would pity, " I have lost all 
 my property, I have lost my hearing, I have lost my 
 sight, my wife is dead, my only son is dead, I am all 
 alone in the world, but Christ is with me and I am 
 happy." Tastes will differ; forms lose their power 
 by familiarity, or our perception and imagination grow 
 dim and obtuse with years ; — but the truth of the Gos- 
 pel received into the heart, will beat and glow when 
 sight and sound and taste are gone. 
 
 The Gospel, in the nature of its truths, as moral 
 and spiritual, brings its approj^riate aliment to the soul 
 as the offspring of God. The hand of art reaches only 
 the outer surface of the soul, touching and polishing 
 its sensibilities ; it builds the case of the organ, and 
 carves and polishes it, and adorns it with show-pipes 
 of silver or gold ; but this gives forth no music at the 
 dedication. "^^ The hand of the master must voice those 
 pipes, and put into the case an action which shall cause 
 it to utter all divine harmonies. Of what worth were 
 the most elaborately finished case, if there were no 
 organ to fill it ? Wherefore, in tuning the soul for God, 
 we must seek not first the washing and polishing of the 
 outward, but the forming of that which is within. This 
 the Gospel is designed to effect. For the truths which 
 it brings are not only adapted to the spiritual nature 
 of the soul, but they are truths of the grandest import, 
 and at the same time the most vital and personal w^ith 
 which man can have to do. The Gospel brings God 
 
 * The Oman was unfinislied at the dedication of the Tabernacle. 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 87 
 
 before the soul in the highest manifestation which He 
 has made of himself to man. Not the fiery cloud of 
 Sinai, nor the Shekinah in the Temple, nor any of the 
 Theophanies of the Old Testament could reveal God, 
 or do more than represent Him by symbol ; but in the 
 Gospel, God is manife-stm the flesh; we see his glory, 
 full of grace and truth ; we hear his voice ; we behold 
 every attribute of his character ; and we find Him thus 
 revealing himself upon matters of infinite concern- 
 ment to us. And what can lay hold upon the soul 
 with a power so vital and controlling as the thought of a 
 present God speaking to it of His holiness and its own 
 guilt; of His law and its transgressions; of His com- 
 ing judgment and its eternal destiny ; of His grace 
 to take away its sin and avert its condemnation ? 
 
 Herein the Gospel speaks to every soul alike, and 
 it meets every faculty and susceptibility of the soul. 
 With its eternal law reiterated by Christ with most 
 inward application ; its eternal sanctions of blessedness 
 for the holy and of sorrow for the wicked ; and its amaz- 
 ing sacrifice to honor the law while saving the guilty, 
 it satisfies that sense of justice which lingers in the 
 most rude and barbarous mind. In the character of 
 God, an infinite yet personal spirit, all-holy and almighty, 
 it presents that majesty which alone can meet the 
 aspirations of the soul toward the illimitably great and 
 good. In the character of Christ, it meets the senti- 
 ments of truth and honor, and the sense of beauty, 
 transcendent in moral purity, which lead forth the soul 
 in homage to the true, the beautiful and the good. In 
 the precepts and doctrines of Christ, it meets the thirst 
 of the soul for knowled2:e, and its conscious need of a 
 teacher from above. By the sufferings and death of 
 Christ, and with his proffered grace, the Gospel meets 
 
88 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 that sense of guilt which burdens every soul, and that 
 yearning after reconciliation with God, which has cov- 
 ered the earth with altars and watered it with tears. 
 With its promise of the life everlasting, the Gospel 
 satisfies that longing after immortality, with which the 
 soul in all ages has struggled against the mystery ot 
 death. Above all, in the love which it brings and the 
 love which it evokes, the Gospel meets the sighing of 
 every soul for a peace that cannot be shaken. Even 
 Goethe, who never knew the highest, purest form of 
 love, could sing : — 
 
 " I do not envy yon, ye joyless stars, 
 Though fair ye be, and glorious to the sight — 
 No ! for ye love not, nor have ever loved ! " 
 
 But this love of Christ, transforming and constrain- 
 ing, makes the soul master of the universe as its Fa- 
 ther's house; — "all are yours, and ye are* Christ's, and 
 Christ is God's." This intimate adaptation of the Gos- 
 pel to the soul, and this wondrous power of renovation 
 unto life and peace, give to preaching its preeminence. 
 With these we meet alike all classes, ages, and condi- 
 tions. The aged apostle who had seen Christ's glory 
 outshining the sun, who had been caught up into the 
 third heaven, and had heard unutterable things ; to 
 whom it was given to know the mysteries of God, — 
 when in prison expecting a cruel death, could say no 
 more than this: "Jesus Christ came into the world to 
 save sinners, of whom I am chief. I know whom I 
 have believed. He is faithful that promised." And 
 the poor dying boy who had just heard of Jesus at 
 the Sabbath-school, called his mother to the bedside, 
 and asked her to read the Saviour's promise, — " Suffer 
 little children to come to me," and then bade her lay 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 89 
 
 the open Bible on the bed that lie might put his finger 
 on the promise ; for, said he, " Jesus up in the sky 
 might not notice little James when he dies, but if I 
 keep my finger on the promise, he will see it and come 
 and take me." glorious Gospel of the blessed God! 
 In comparison with this all else is nothing. This 
 comes to the soul, to every soul, the greatest and the 
 humblest, with most intimate adaptation, with most 
 comprehensive control. We can dispense with ordi- 
 nances, and ritual, and art ; we can dispense with 
 philosophy and rhetoric and all the wisdom of words, 
 if we can but preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. 
 
 (2.) But in order to realize this power of the Gos- 
 pel, we must keep ever before us the one great fact of 
 the Gospel, JRedemption ilirougli the Cross of Christ a-9 
 the atoning sacrifice for sin. The morality of the Gos- 
 pel, pure and simple as that is, will never alone regen- 
 erate the world. Though Christ himself should preacli 
 the morality of the Sermon on the Mount, men would 
 still live and die in sin. They must be regenerated 
 tinto that morality by a deeper motive-power than pre- 
 cept or example can furnish. The ethical and theo- 
 logical doctrines of the Gospel, crystallized into per- 
 manent dogmatic forms and systematized as a creed, 
 sublime as those doctrines are, and worthy of the great 
 argument of Michael the Archangel to Adam, in the 
 Paradise Lost^ yet would no more lift the race out of 
 the depths of its depravity, than a disquisition upon 
 planetary attraction would lift the tides without the 
 felt attraction of the moon. And therefore it was that 
 Paul, dialectician though he was, but of a school greater 
 than Aristotle, rhetorician though he was, but of a 
 model higher than the Greek Sophists, in writing to 
 the Corinthians, who delighted in the graces of style 
 7 
 
00 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 and the niceties of speculative philosophy, said of his 
 own teaching, "I came not to you with excellency of 
 speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony 
 of God. For I determined not to know any thing 
 among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." 
 There is a place for philosophy in the Christian system 
 — for what theme of philosophy is so vast and pro- 
 found as that which angels desire to look into? There 
 is a use for rhetoric in preaching, where emphatically 
 a word fitly spoken is "like apples of gold in pictures 
 of silver.'' But when the sermon assumes the form of 
 philosophical disquisition or of rhetorical address, to 
 such a degree that its philosophy or its rhetoric is the 
 thing noticed and remembered, then is it but sounding 
 brass and a tinkling cymbal. Wherefore the preacher 
 of the Gospel should not seek after the wisdom of 
 words, "lest the Cross of Christ should be made of 
 none effect. For the preaching of the Cross is to 
 them that perish, foolishness ; but to us which are 
 saved, it is the power of God." 
 
 The power of the Gospel lies in the cross. Three 
 elements combine to give to the cross of Christ a power 
 over the human soul which nothing in Nature or Art, 
 in Philosophy or History, nothing within the plane ot 
 our common Humanity can approach unto ; — it ex- 
 hibits -a suffering altogether peculiar and transcendent 
 in its nature ; a suffering exinatory for human guilt, 
 and compensatory under the government of God ; a 
 suffering expressive of divine sympatliy for human looe. 
 Take away either element, and it is no longer the cross; 
 take away the cross, and we no longer have a gospel 
 or a Christ. 
 
 As we contemplate the cross of Christ, it is not 
 suffering alone that moves us, nor yet the innocence 
 
THE GRAND FUNCTI jN OF THE MINISTER. 91 
 
 and patience of the sufferer. Its mysterious power lies 
 in the w finite dicjnity a7id icortli of that sufferer, and in 
 the impenetrable anguish of his sinless soul. The high- 
 est elements of human heroism and suffering cannot 
 renew and repeat their own impression. We are 
 touched with a reverent sorrow as we look upon 
 Socrates in his cell drinking the fated hemlock ; and 
 our pulses beat with indignation at his accusers. We 
 are stirred with pity at the sight of Lear, haggard, fren- 
 zied, doting in love, yet battling with hate, " mad as 
 the vexed sea," raging in the wild magnificence of his 
 woe. But how many times, think you, could fne most 
 pathetic orator move you with the death-scene of Soc- 
 rates ? For how many nights could Garrick impress 
 you by personating Lear? But the cross of Christ 
 renews and augments its own impression, above all 
 power of human language. Now and then a painter 
 transfers to canvas his conception of some merely hu- 
 man tragedy, and tliis awakens the passing interest 
 and criticism of lovers of art. The subject, once 
 treated, hardly bears repetition. But the greatest 
 masters of every school, in every age, have sought to 
 represent on canvas that peerless head crowned with 
 thorns; and yet no pencil has given expression to "the 
 man of sorrows acquainted with grief" The heart is 
 not satisfied, the task is not accomplished. You walk 
 the galleries of Europe, and pause successively before 
 the famed heads of Christ by the masters ; but this is 
 too effeminate, that too sorrowful; this too earthly, 
 that too spiritual for a proper sympathy ; in this the 
 thorns predominate, in that the glory ; and so you say 
 continually, " This is not my Saviour." For our own 
 nature, having sounded the deeps of all human sor 
 row, and measured the height of all human heroism, 
 
92 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 teaches that here there is both a divinity in the sufferer 
 and a reach of suffering boundless as eternity. It was 
 fitting that to symbolize and to honor that suffering, 
 the two extremes of Time should meet; that the old 
 Chaos should return with earthquake and darkness, and 
 that this should be confronted by the Resurrection unto 
 Life, both meeting at his cross. 
 
 But tlie tragic element in the Crucifixion will not 
 alone explain the power of the cross. An expiation 
 for guilt, a compensation to offended law, " that God 
 might be just and the justifier of him that believeth," 
 this stirs our souls to a yet deeper depth. " Behold 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the 
 world." Atheism scoffs, but will not suffer, even to re- 
 deem. Divine love suffers for the guilty — for its ene- 
 mies. Where all else had fiiiled, and forever must fail, 
 Christ accomplishes all. As the soul gazes upon his 
 cross, it cries, " This agony is vast as hell ; this my sins 
 deserve; this my guilt demands; this my faith accepts 
 as its prevailing sacrifice." 
 
 "The sea of ill, for whicli the universe 
 With all its piled space, can find no shore, 
 With all its life, no living foot to tread ! 
 But He accomplished in Jehovah being, 
 
 Sustains the gaze adown, 
 
 Conceives the vast despair, 
 And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown, 
 Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.'' 
 
 And here comes in the third element of power in 
 the cross — a divine sympathy loitli human luoe. It is 
 not wrath that erects the cross, but love. Not bloody 
 vengeance demanding a victim, but love offering a 
 sacrifice And this love expresses itself in human form, 
 and Avith all true human sympathies, exalted and inten- 
 sified by union with the divine. Guilt would fain take 
 
THE GRAND FUNXTION OF THE MINISTER. 93 
 
 refuge in Atheism, to shield it from despair. But there 
 is no relief for guilt by going away from God ; it is 
 only by coming to God that peace is gained. " God is 
 in Christ reconciling the world to himself" Sympa- 
 thetic sorrow, the agony that yearns until it saves, is 
 begotten not of negation and unbelief, but of the vital 
 forces of love. 
 
 In thus addressing us through sympathy the cross 
 embodies a power, which, while too subtle for analysis, 
 is world-wide and perpetual. The father of Milton 
 composed a sacred tune " which is yet sung all over 
 England in the nursery, as a lullaby : and the*chimes 
 of country churches, from time immemorial, have 
 played it six or eight times in four and twenty hours. 
 And so, apart from all that he has given us through his 
 son, there yet rests in the air of Britain, capable of being 
 set loose wherever church-bells send their chimes over 
 English earth, or voices are raised in sacred concert 
 round an English or S sottish fireside, some portion of 
 the soul of that admirable man, and his love of sweet 
 sounds."^' 
 
 But for eighteen hundred years, that sympathetic 
 song of angels — Peace on earth, good-will to men — 
 that first touched the simple hearts of shepherds, has 
 lingered in the air to be evoked by every Christian 
 mother's hymn, by every church-bell chime, and to- 
 day, after the lapse of eighteen centuries, as we keep 
 in this new sanctuary the festal day on which Jesus 
 rose from the dead, the Master stands in the midst of 
 us, as amid the amazed disciples in the upper chamber, 
 and showing in his hands and feet and side the marks 
 of his great agony, breathes on us his divine and eter- 
 nal peace. The Gospel enfolds us with all human sj^m- 
 pathies energized by divine love. With such elements 
 
 * Masson's Life of Milton. The tune is " Yorli." 
 
94 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 of power how can we fail to put the Gospel foremost in 
 all plans and labors for the benefit of mankind ? With 
 such a power committed to his trust, the preacher 
 should ever say with Paul, " Christ sent me not to bap- 
 tize, but to preach the Gospel ; not with wisdom of words, 
 lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect." 
 
 From the many inferences suggested by the sub- 
 ject, I select but two : — 
 
 1. The true and permanent reformation of so- 
 ciety can he accomplished only through the Gospel 
 of Christy faithfidly proclaimed. The world wak- 
 ing to* a new consciousness of its sorrows and its 
 sins, cries out everywhere for reform. The minister of 
 Christ should be the first to hear and answer that cry; the 
 first to see, the first to feel, the first to move against 
 all forms of moral evil in the world. He should take 
 the lead in every wise and beneficent reform, under 
 the broad commission of Him " who came to preach the 
 Gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and 
 to preach deliverance to the captives." Fain would I 
 reproduce that Gospel in this synagogue. When two 
 years ago I addressed my own flock for the last time 
 in the Old Tabernacle, I said, "I trust never to meet 
 this church in a so-called house of God, where no 
 place is found for the poor, and no prayer is heard for 
 the slave." May I never be so false to the Master as 
 to mutilate and suppress his Gospel, in that sympathy 
 for the poor, the outcast, the afflicted, the oppressed, 
 which He proclaimed in his first sermon at Nazareth. 
 May this church never prove so false to Him who hath 
 redeemed them with his blood, as to deny his Gospel 
 to the poor, and his sympathy for the captive. Ere 
 that day should come, may the light of this pulpit be 
 extinguished, and these arches crumble into ruin. 
 
 We accept the Gospel as Christ has given it, the 
 
THE GHAND FUNCTION OF THE MINISTER. 95 
 
 means and the pledge of all reform. Do you show me 
 the burdens of society? I know that even amid our 
 boasted civilization these are manifold and grievous, but 
 the cross can bear and relieve them all. Do you point 
 me to war, reviving its horrors? What diplomacy can- 
 not avert, nor commerce hinder, the Gospel of peace 
 in the hearts of the people shall do away for evei\ Do 
 you point me to poverty with the wrongs that it suf- 
 fers and the vices it encourages ? The Gospel applied 
 with the liberality and the fidelity of love, shall re- 
 move those vices and redress those wrongs. ,Do you 
 point me to slavery, which upon thi^ soil, consecrated 
 by the martyrs of freedom, would perpetuate a bar- 
 barism worse than that which cursed the soil of Rome, 
 and destroyed its empire ? I answer still, meet this 
 with the Gospel. Philosophy, Humanity, Political 
 Economy, these are not pure enough nor strong 
 enough, to cope with that iniquity. This kind of de- 
 mon which "foameth and gnasheth with its teeth," can 
 come forth "by nothing but by prayer and fasting;" 
 and even then may sorely rend the body it has pos- 
 sessed. But after all the disciples and doctors have 
 failed, the word of Christ can cast it out. But it must 
 be the whole pure Gospel, undisguised by the philoso- 
 phy and rhetoric of men, unmutilated by the temporal 
 policy or the selfish desires of men. Not a Gospel pre- 
 pared to suit a market where husbands, and wives, 
 and fathers, and mothers, and children are sold as 
 chattels : but the Gospel that teaches you that Christ 
 died for every man, and, therefore, that to make mer- 
 chandise of a man whom Christ hath redeemed, and to 
 keep from him the Bible, is to sin against Christ; — the 
 Gospel that teaches you to sympathize with and suffer 
 for the poor, the weak, the wronged, the oppressed, 
 and warns you that if you have not the spirit of Christ, 
 
96 PREACHING THE GOSPEL 
 
 you are none of His. Yes, let us preach the Gospel 
 against slavery, till there shall not be found in all the 
 land one claiming the name of Christian who will pre- 
 sume to defend it. Let us use the Gospel as the pledge 
 and the power of all reform. 
 
 2. Our sole reliance for ])ersonal salvation must 
 he upon the Gospel of Christ. If the minister must 
 ever keep the Gospel before ordinances, before rit- 
 uals, before philosophy, before all the wisdom and 
 power of man, it is because " Christ crucified is the 
 power of God, and the wisdom of God," and "it 
 hath pleased God by the foolishness of preaching 
 to save them that believe." If to be faithful to our 
 trust, we who preach must " determine not to know 
 any thing among you, save Jesus Christ and him cru- 
 cified," it is because "there is none other name under 
 heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." 
 We must be faithful to Christ that we may be service- 
 able to you. For " God, who has reconciled us to 
 Himself by Jesus Christ, hath given us the ministry of 
 reconciliation, that God was in Christ reconciling the 
 world to himself. Now, therefore, we are ambassadors 
 for Christ, as though we in Christ's stead beseech 3'ou, 
 Be ye reconciled to God." To some of you, I have 
 preached this Gospel for many years, and yet this 
 high festal day of the Church finds you unrecon- 
 ciled to God. My friends, I have no other message, 
 no higher motive, nor larger plea than this: "Be re- 
 conciled to God thrSugh his Son." To some I speak 
 for the first, to others for the last time ; — yet for both 
 I have only this one message: " Be reconciled to God." 
 Receive Christ crucified, and this Gospel shall be to you 
 the power of God. Forsake this Gospel for your own 
 philosophy, morality, or ritual, neglect it for your 
 worldly gains, and you must perish in your sins. 
 
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