ity and wealth over every sea, and along every valley. Unnumbered agencies, extending through all space, and embracing the combined energies of mankind, and laying under contribution every faculty and power of rational being, and the vast forces of nature, are enlisted and crowded to their greatest capacity, in the service of this world. We do not complain of this. It is right. It is nature acting out her instincts, and developing the mighty and irrepressible energies and resources which God has given her. But we would have the Christian learn a lesson here. Oh! how strange, how out of place, seems an ease-taking indolence in one chosen to represent God, and religion, and eternity, in the midst of such activities--one put here to have a care for the soul, to look after the interests of Christ's kingdom, to be the example of all that is pure and good and truthful, the organ of the realization of eternal realities to a world of perishing sinners! Christian reader, shall we not awake and act well our part in this scene of deathless and responsible activities? The greatness of the work to be done for God and eternity- the shortness of life-the motives of the gospel--the worth of souls-the coming realities of another world, all demand activity, and bid us put far away the love of ease and sloth, and the spirit of delay and indecision, and do with our might whatsoever our hands find to do.

NATIONAL PREACHER.

No. 5, VOL. XXV.]

MAY, 1851.

[WHOLE NO. 283.

BY REV. J. FEW SMITH, PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, AUBURN, N. Y.

SYMPATHY IN THE PREACHER AS AN ELEMENT OF
SUCCESS IN THE MINISTRY.

"Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity."-HEB. 5: 2.

THERE is an analogy, sufficiently obvious though it may be remote, between the priesthood of the Mosaic dispensation and the Christian ministry. The Christian minister does not indeed offer unto God gifts and sacrifices for sins. The Christian Church has but one Priest: the "great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God," who," after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God," and there "ever liveth to make intercession for them who come unto God by him." Yet, like the Jewish high priest and some of his assistants, the ministers of the gospel do bear an official relation, at the same time to God, and to the people; do conduct the public ceremonies of religion in behalf of the people, and in a certain subordinate sense are the organs of communication between God and men. The analogy is not sufficient to throw over upon the Christian ministry the peculiar sanctity and divine authority of the priesthood, by which the Jewish high priest was separated from the people, and elevated above them, and put in authority over them; but it is sufficient to justify us in finding in the requirements which God made of the priesthood, instruction as to the required character and conduct of the Christian ministry. Those requirements were of two classes: one relating to things physical, the other, to things of a moral nature. The physical qualifications demanded of the priesthood may perhaps all be regarded as emblematic of analogous moral qualifications which

should be found in the minister of the gospel; while the requirements pertaining to moral qualifications are equally applicable to both. One of these is brought to our notice in the text. It is asserted that in ordaining men to the priesthood to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin, God had in view the existence and exercise of a becoming sympathy for the people. He expected the high priest to have kind feelings toward the erring and guilty men for whom he was officiating, because he himself was a fallible and guilty creature. He was to "have compassion" on them-to treat them with gentleness and kindness, because of a deep sympathy with them arising from his own weakness and liability to sin. Holding to them the relation of God's representative, conveying to them God's counsels, appearing in their behalf before the Holy Presence in the sanctuary, reproving and rebuking them for sin,-he was yet to remember that he was a man-a man of like passions with themselves, compassed also with infirmity."

And now we scarcely need the analogy which subsists between them in their official relations, to justify the application of this requirement of the Jewish high priest to the Christian minister. For if any man need to remember that he also is a man, compassed with infirmity, surely it is he who speaks to his dying fellow-men those momentous truths which take hold upon eternity. If any man may be expected to have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, surely it is he who has by wondrous grace been reclaimed from sin, and called to preach the way of salvation to the lost. I am justified, therefore, in using the text for the purpose of inculcating such a lesson on my brethren in the ministry and on myself. And keeping in view the great end for which God himself has instituted the ministry, and so viewing the minister as seeking most successfully to attain that end, I may go beyond the course of conduct enjoined in the expression "having compassion," which in its fulness means, treating with moderation and kindness, to the great principle involved in it, and suggested by the final clause, "for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity;" and using the word sympathy to cover the whole of the injunction in spirit and in practice, I announce as the subject to which I would now invite your attention,

SYMPATHY IN THE PREACHER AS AN ELEMENT OF SUCCESS

IN THE MINISTRY.

1. The preacher must enter into the feelings and circumstances of his audience in order rightly to adapt to them the truth which he preaches. There is, indeed, a general adaptation in all truth to the conditions and wants of men. All religious truth is valuable. The main teachings of the Christian religion are always in place always appropriate, and always weighty in instruction and in

fluence. There are prominent features of human nature common to all men. There is something in the hearts of all which is responsive to the voice of divine revelation; and he who touches before any number of men any note of the sacred harp will not fail to awaken some tone of unison in the harp of thousand strings in man. No word caught from the lips of Inspiration can be useless, or uttered in vain to any of the sons of men. It can never be amiss for the preacher to hold up before his audience the great fact which constitutes the glory and preciousness of the gospel, and, appealing powerfully to their consciences to convince them of guilt, to point them to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.

But it must also be born in mind, that every truth is not equally appropriate, and equally potent for good, under all circumstances. Human nature, though the same in general, is diverse in particulars. One note of the divine harp is not adapted to all the varying shades of character in man. It is strung and tuned by the Almighty Parent so as to send forth an almost endless variety of sounds, from the gentlest, most subduing tone of love, to the deepest, loudest thunder of retributive justice; and he who harps ever on one string to man, sinful, sorrowing, tempted, triumphing, will fail to do justice to the harmony of the gospel message, and fail to do good to his fellowmen. In other words, the preacher must discriminate between the different classes of hearers, and between the different states of mind in which the hearers may be at different times, and must learn how to adapt the specific truth to the specific circumstances. He must know when to convince the judgment; when to establish his hearers in the faith; when to rebuke; when to warn; when to instruct; when to comfort; when to encourage. What the work of the ministry demands is not the mere abstract preaching of general truths; not simply the philosophy of religion. But the truths of Christianity must be set home to the hearts of men each in its proper place and time. And men are not merely to be viewed in the abstract, as sinners or as Christians, but are to be regarded in their various characters and various wants, in classes almost innumerable, yet having some common peculiarity of favor or of need, and individually, each having some special claim to regard; and the preaching must be to human nature in general, and to human nature in its classes of men, and to human nature individually. "On some the preacher is to have compassion, making a difference, and others he is to save with fear, pulling them out of the fire." To this variety of special purposes, all harmonizing in the one great purpose of securing a perfect redemption, and to this great variety in human nature, the teachings of the Bible, as already intimated, are admirably adapted; and the great truths which are to be the means for accomplishing the benevolent design of God, are presented in endless diversity of form: not abstract

and philosophic, but concrete, embodied in figure and parable and living form, so as to reach the heart, and win it to holiness. And the preacher discriminating in the manner mentioned is but imitating the divine method, and carrying out the spirit of the gospel, while he is thus "rightly dividing the word of truth," and as a faithful steward of the mysteries of God giving to every man his portion in due season.

Now, in order to secure most fully this adaptedness in preaching, something more is necessary than an acquaintance with the general features and facts of human nature. The two great comprehensive truths: man, as a fallen being, needs a Saviour; the gospel proclaims a Saviour adapted to man's need; these must not only be regarded in this abstract manner, but they must be taken into the preacher's own heart, and thought over and felt there, and have their richness of meaning wrung out by him in his own experience, and be turned over and over by him, until he learns to be familiar with their myriad phases. He must look out upon the world, and see not only immortal beings in sin, pressing onward to the grave and the judgment; but noting well the workings of his own heart, and observing closely the conduct of his fellow-men, he must form some correct idea of the mighty struggle of the soul. He must learn where the burden presses, and bring from God's Word a power to lighten it. He must understand the strength of temptation, the bondage of sinful habit, the multiform influence of the world; and he must know how to furnish to the soul an armor by which it may ward off the darts of the adversary; must assist it in resisting temptation, in breaking the fetters of sinful habits, in disentangling itself from the meshes of sin, and the embrace of the world. He must know how to make allowance for the peculiar difficulties which beset various classes of men He must look at men and things as they are; practically, and as a man. He must feel as a man, and with all a man's feelings, and enriched by study, he must bring forward from the treasury of divine truth things for man as he is, just suited to each man's case: for the young and the old, the poor and the rich, the doubting, the feeble-minded, the ignorant, the scornful, the negligent, the careless, the awakened, the inquiring, the penitent, the meek, the humble, the sorrowful, the rejoicing. And he cannot do this unless he sympathizes with human nature; unless he enters into the feelings of his hearers. He cannot do it, if he holds himself aloof from them and above them, as a being of a different order, charged simply with messages from God to man-to man, of whom he cares to know nothing more than that he is man. Not for this purpose was man chosen to be God's ambassador to man. Not for such a purpose did the Diety become incarnate: but that man as a brother, sympathizing with a brother's condition, might address unto him the appropriate truth; that for man there might ever