law. Rom. 13: 8-10. As a righteous man his life is conformable to the law of God; for the idea of right or of wrong is only the idea of conformity to the law by which we are bound, or of disconformity to it. The moment a righteous man does wrong, he ceases to be righteous. The moment he is inclined to do wrong, the law takes hold of him and condemns him as a sinner. The moment that his love grows cold and ceases to bear him onward in the path of duty, he needs the law to keep him from unrighteousness, and to convince him of sin.

The same law is given as a rule of conduct to the whole intellectual universe. There can be but one moral law, as there is but one moral nature of God. It is variously modified, as to its form, by the capacity of the intelligent creature; but its principles are everywhere and always the same. These are contained in the two precepts which our Saviour represents as the sum of the law and the prophets, viz., Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.-Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. No creature can love God more than with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and no creature can lawfully love him less. None can love his neighbor more than himself; but none is permitted to love him less. So the pure spirits of heaven love God. So one angel loves another. This is the cause of the order and the peace of heaven, and the fountain of heaven's bliss.

ARTICLE IV.

BOLDNESS IN THE PREACHER.

By Aaron M. Colton, Theol. Seminary, Andover.

BOLDNESS in the pursuit of any object is true philosophy. Consult the page of the historian, the novelist, and the poet. Who have stamped indelibly the impress of their minds on the destiny of nations? Who have wielded most effectively the Scourge of war, or swayed over the widest realms the sceptre of empire? Who have been most renowned for hazardous en

terprise, in voyage and discovery, in political revolution, in religious reformation? Who-but the Alexanders, the Columbuses, the Hampdens, the Luthers, and the Knoxes? Whobut men bold in the designs they formed, and bold in the execution of their designs? They have all been men linked to their several determinations by an iron band, not to be severed, except by calamity or death. They have all been strangers to fear and timid wariness; undeterred by fatigue, or pleasure, or pain; inaccessible to flattery, or frowns, or ridicule; possessing an instinctive sovereignty of mind, that would assert its way through the world, and, in the face of all obstacles, press its own decisions.

There is power in boldness. We bow to a decisive spirit. We do it instinctive homage. The agent may be evil, and then we deplore its mischievous activity. A Caesar's quarrels fill the world with widows and with orphans. We deprecate his doings; but he evinces an energy of mind, from which we cannot withhold our admiration. We are pained that he should have done so much evil. We e are tempted to say, it were good for the world had such a man not been born. But the man stands before us, and we look and admire. We begin to philosophize, and are half ashamed of our admiration, and would retire from the sight. But we linger, and turn, and go back to catch one more glance, and our admiration is rife again in spite of our philosophy.

Boldness in a bad cause is power; in a good cause is greater power. Moral goodness has more sublimity than moral evil, and strikes the imagination more strongly. Besides, moral goodness has an attractive grace-a charm of loveliness, which moral evil has not. A bad man excites our admiration by evincing lofty resolve. A good man reinforces an equal admiration, by enlisting in his favor the best sentiments of the heart. sublime moral spectacle, Luther on his way to the Diet of Worms strikes us with greater power than Hannibal scaling the Alps, or Leonidas in the pass of Thermopyla.

As a

Christianity is unsurpassed as a field for the display of heroic virtue. As an enterprise, never was one so noble in the conception; so arduous in the execution; so momentous in the contemplated results. There is in it a moral grandeur-an intense sublimity, infinitely transcending all the aims of martial heroism.

It is not the recklessness, the impudence, the blunt obstinacy

of the warrior, that is demanded of the Christian ;-but the boldness of firm conviction, full persuasion, conscious honesty of aim, intense zeal in a good cause-boldness baptized into the christian spirit, and subjected to the christian principle-christian boldness, but boldness still, striking, intrepid, effective.

Boldness befits the preacher's office. In determining proprieties of conduct, a distinction is to be made between the officer and the man. The distinction is made, the world over, in secular affairs. What virtues more noble and useful, can adorn the man, than compassion and forgiveness? But a compassionate and forgiving judge, if not a solecism in speech, is an absurdity in morals. The neighbor, the citizen, may exhibit all the graces and charities of a kindly nature. His example may be attractive as "the sweet influences of the Pleiades ;" beautiful as a flower blown in its native bed. But let these very graces, excellent as they are in their appropriate sphere, be transferred from the man to the judge, and the virtue becomes a vice, and what was beauty, is now a blemish. The sentinel on duty forsakes his post in the hour of danger. It would, he says, be arrogance in him to contend against superior skill and numbers. Is he not a modest man? He is a coward. Modesty is not to be the crowning excellence of the soldier on the field of battle. Bravery becomes him there. John Jay, the citizen, is a pattern of all the milder virtues. His is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. But is John Jay, the ambassador, characteristically retiring and distrustful of his own opinions? The British Cabinet are his superiors in age, experience, wisdom. Shall he then from modesty submit the Treaty entirely to their better discretion? By no means. His pretensions to equality with them, extend not beyond his office. In that office he is their equal. His country chose him, not them, to be its representative. But is he not a man; and does not modesty become a frail, erring man? He is an ambassador. He is called to act as the representative of his country. But is he not fallible? His country chose a fallible man, and knew they did so. But might not the choice have fallen on an abler and better man? That is his country's concern, not his. They saw fit to select him for the trust; and it becomes him, not in any manner to apologize for their act, not to impeach, but to vindicate the wisdom of their choice. Apply this distinction to the preacher, and you sweep away at a breath, every objection to boldness in his pulpit exhibitions. In all the relations of private life, let

him exhibit those graces, which adorn the private life. In the pulpit, let him be bold. God hath seen fit to place him there. The preacher occupies a place of higher trust, and more momentous responsibility, than any other on earth. He stands there, not as a mere brother of his congregation, but as the ambassador of Christ. He is to speak, not his own message, but a message from Christ; not in his own name, but in the name of Christ. He is to speak as one having authority. He speaks in Christ's stead. Let him speak "boldly as he ought to speak."

Why should not the preacher be bold? Shall he be timid through fear of his hearers? His call to the ministry, his credentials, his message, are not theirs to give, or take away. His high aim is not to gratify their tastes, or flatter their vanity, or humor their prejudices; but to save their souls. Their opinions are not the rule of his duty, nor their favor the test of his fidelity. He stands accountable for his stewardship to no human tribunal. "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth." "It is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment; yea, I judge not mine own self:"-" he that judgeth me is the Lord." The preacher's crown of life, the prize of his high calling, depends on no human caprice. It is laid up for him in heaven.

But boldness commends itself to the better judgment of the hearer. Is the hearer a trifler? Timidity will not win him. Boldness may rebuke him. Is he a man of sense and candor? Boldness will not offend him. He will make the distinction between the officer and the brother. His self-respect, at least, will prompt him to place the preacher upon the basis of his office. It is assumed, in every step the hearer takes toward the house of God, that the preacher is to address him in the name and by the authority of Christ. Shall the preacher ascend the pulpit, and there take it upon himself to utter the sentiments of Holy Writ as his own mere opinions or advice? He could not be guilty of greater arrogance. He could not give his hearers a greater insult. No! It is due to them, that he demean himself as the servant of Christ; that he exhibit to them not advice, but authority; not opinions, but decisions; not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, "but the word of the Lord, which abideth forever." Boldness in the preacher as the servant of Christ, is modesty in him as a man.

Boldness accords with the character of the christian revelation. Bold, beyond comparison, are the spirit and manner of the Bible-its descriptions of natural objects-its striking delineations of hell, and heaven, and God. Bold are its moral portraitures-its reproofs and rebukes for sin-its denunciations of woe to the guilty-its demands of universal and unconditional repentance-its threatenings, pointing down to the chambers of death its promises, revealing the gates of life.

The best preachers have been singular for, boldness. Such were the Edwardses and the Tennents of our own land. Such were Baxter, and Whitefield, and the Wesleys of Great Britain. Such were Knox, and Luther, and Zuinglius, of an earlier era. Such were "the noble army of martyrs," and "the company of the holy apostles." Such a preacher was Paul. Behold him at Athens. He stands on the summit of Mars Hill. The lofty Acropolis, with its crowning Parthenon, towers behind him. The Egean, gemmed with green islands, stretches away in the distance before him. The splendid city of Athens, with her temples, and altars, and images, lies át his feet. An immense throng of Athenians have gathered around him. He stands among them, but he stands alone-a barbarian, a Jew, a stranger in a city of strangers. He had come from a distant land in fulfilment of a commission from the Saviour of men. He had come to a city, whose laws denounced death to the man who should introduce a foreign deity. He now stands before a most august assembly-a body of men venerable alike for their learning, their experience, and their years;-before the very tribunal, which had recently condemned the purest and most patriotic of their own philosophers for alleged hostility to their religious rites. He stands to answer for a similar crime. He had preached among them "Jesus and the resurrection "—a doctrine utterly hostile to their civic grandeur, their state policy, their proudest and most cherished superstitions. Will the tribunal, which spared not their own Socrates, now spare the stranger? The question enters not his mind. He comes forward to this tribunal, not to retract his obnoxious doctrines, but to reassert them; to bind and rivet them with still greater power upon the judgment and the conscience. He lifts his arm to speak, and it is with the majesty of one on whom rests the Spirit of the living God. He exhibits that last decisive energy of a rational courage, which confides in the Supreme Power