lee; and they have peopled heaven with millions of a bloodwashed tenantry. True, all ministers may not be able, either intellectually or physically, to perform the same kind or the same amount of labor, or to secure the same wonderful results; but all may follow after the deep foot-prints which those have made in their triumphant career from earth to glory. Now we say that this age demands such a ministry. The Church needs it. The wants of a perishing world plead earnestly for it. And the voice of God from his throne, and the voice of the great Head of the Church, and the inward voice of the Holy Ghost, command every minister to this work.

And yet it is painfully apparent that many are heedless to these calls. We will grant, what we most heartily believe to be true, that, on the whole, no country on the globe has ever had, from its very infancy until now, such a ministry for earnestness, zeal, and efficiency as our own has possessed. The ministry of America have, under God, saved it from barbarism, and raised it up to the very first rank among the nations of the earth. And the ministry of no Church have done so much toward this result as our own. That ministry have followed up the everwestward movement of our surging population; have swam rivers, forded streams, penetrated wildernesses, climbed mountains, waded through swamps, preached in log-cabins and barns, in the woods, on the mountains, in the valleys, undaunted by dangers and undeterred by difficulties.

Great and glorious have been their successes! And we would that the mantles of our heaven-ascended fathers might be caught up and wrapped around all their sons in the ministry. But after all this is granted, is it not true that there are in our own, and in the ministry of other Churches, many who may well be called easy ministers? Great as the results referred to have been, might they not have been multiplied tenfold—aye, even a thousand fold-if all had possessed the earnestness and the energy of the few? And is there not some ground for the fear that now, as the wealth of our Church is increasing, and we are a "respectable" people, and salaries are annually growing larger, and the comforts of our ministers are multiplying, for all of which we are grateful—and which, instead of effeminating our ministry, should only stimulate us to new and more vigorous exertion-there will be a growing tendency to make

the office of the minister a mere sinecure? We trust that such a fear is groundless."

But let us now turn our attention more directly to the easy minister. If we mistake not, such a man has low views of personal piety, and of the character and design of his call to the ministry. It is to be supposed that at some period of his life he was converted and called of God. But the glowing ardor of his "first love" has been chilled, and the tremendous responsibilities of his calling are practically ignored. He may be a "good sort of a man," but he is certainly very easy about religion. He is an utter stranger to the higher walks of the Christian life, and is too indolent or too indifferent to reach them, or is unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to tread them. He is very fearful of being considered "righteous over much," and rather boasts that "he makes no pretensions to great piety." He would rather stand at the base of the mountain, the heights of which others are scaling, and question, and criticize, and dream, than climb its rugged sides and stand upon its sunny summits. He spends but little time in prayer, and that is unaccompanied by "strong cries and tears" for himself and his flock. He has no longings for the salvation of souls. If they are saved under his ministry, well; if not, why, it is their own fault, and they must bear the consequences. He is not going to spend sleepless nights over them and anxious days, not he. It is enough for him to go through the routine of duty without troubling himself about others. He will preach, but he does not beseech. As his own heart is cold, his efforts are cold, dull, freezing. They may, indeed, be beautiful, "faultily faultless, icily regular," but they are also "splendidly null." The people are neither roused, nor warned, nor fed by his soulless productions. If his congregations decline, as they probably will; if his prayer-meetings are slimly attended; if the class-meeting is well-nigh abandoned; every one else, he thinks, is to blame but himself. Surely he is doing every thing which the people can reasonably expect of him. But the people among whom he labors, or rather rests, think if he was only more in earnest, more godly, more filled with the Spirit, things would be very different. There are, we think, but few Churches so afflicted with such ministers as one we have heard of, which, when the time of their pastor had

expired, asked the appointing power, more in earnest than in jest, to send them a converted man, or at least one who was religiously inclined."

The preparations of the easy minister for the pulpit are soon and hastily made. Perhaps during the first few years of his ministry he has made one or two hundred skeletons, and they remain, dry and musty, as his only stock in trade for a ministry of twenty or thirty years. These skeletons are like the bones which Ezekiel saw in vision in one respect, although unlike them in another. They are "very dry," but they are not very many." But he has rattled those thinly-clad skeletons so frequently before the people, that they fail to be either interested or startled by their noise. In fact, at each succeeding effort the effect of this performance sensibly decreases, as the preacher has less taste and strength to rattle them, and the people have less patience to listen to the noise. Or he may have procured one or two volumes of "sketches," containing the dry bones of other men, and these furnish him with frames upon which he hangs his scanty and threadbare thoughts. Now there can be no doubt at all in the mind of the thoughtful man that these "volumes of sketches" are an unmitigated nuisance, which every minister ought to scorn or laugh at, as a healthy man, with vigorous limbs, would at a pair of crutches. But some men go on these crutches all their days, because they are too indolent to employ their powers in walking abroad with a firm and vigorous step. What a blessing it would be to them and to the Church if all these skeletons, sketches, or crutches were burned up, and they were thrown upon their own resources, in humble dependence upon God, and in diligent effort to give to the people something new and fresh! Before the late Doctor Chalmers had experienced the saving grace of the Gospel-and he was a minister for some twelve years before this auspicious event--his preparations for the pulpit were very slight; but after his conversion the study of God's Word for his own comfort, as well as for the instruction and edification of his people, was constant, earnest, and life-long. The contrast is clearly seen in the following fact, related by his biographer. Old John Bonthron frequently and familiarly called on Mr. Chalmers. One day he said to him, "I find you aye, sir, with one thing or another; but, come when I may, I never find you at your

studies for the Sabbath." "O, an hour or two on the Saturday evening is quite enough for that!" was the minister's reply. But now the wonderful change had come which transformed him from an easy to an earnest minister, and John often found Mr. C. poring eagerly over the pages of the Bible. One day he said to him, "I never come in now, sir, but I find you aye at your Bible." "All too little, John, all too little," was the significant reply. O for such a change in every easy minister! But we must follow the easy minister now into the pulpit. It is the Bible which he opens, the word of the ever-living God; but he reads it as a school-boy would read his lesson, or as one would read an idle tale, or in so hurried a manner, and with tones so low, that no one is impressed. The hymns, too, are read without any seeming appreciation of their deep, spiritual significance. The prayer is cold, formal, heartless and the sermon is dry, stale, and uninteresting. Is it any wonder that the people turn from such a service with loathing and disgust? Can we marvel that the secular press sometimes holds up such men to the ridicule, the scorn, and the contempt of the world? If these men were really true representatives of the pulpit in this country--which, thank God! they are not-there would be room for the unfounded assertion too often made, "that the pulpit has lost its power." So far as these easy ministers are concerned it, is a failure: it is more-it is a burlesque, a caricature. It is not claimed that all men should be as seraphic as Fletcher and Whitefield, as mighty as Chalmers and Olin, or as learned as Clarke and Dwight. But it is claimed that all ministers, in their various abilities, should be as earnest as they It does not require great learning to be in great earnest. It does not require great natural or acquired powers to be an effective minister. But earnestness is the very soul of all eloquence, and never fails to command attention. And what a sad spectacle it is to see a man professedly called of God to a work in which Jesus wept, and Paul besought, and Luther thundered, and the Wesleys and Whitefield performed with quenchless zeal and ardor, and our fathers wrought with a heroism and earnestness never surpassed-aye, never equaled since apostolic days-go through its duties with the dryness of a manakin and the powerlessness of a pantomimical show!

were.

But the easy minister is greatly fearful lest he should injure

himself. He has heard of some ministers who have studied too hard; he would carefully avoid this by studying too little. He has read of others who have worn themselves out in the ministry. "Foolish men!" he says to himself. "I never intend to do this." Of others, he has heard that their voice has failed in the earnest proclamations of divine truth. But he has resolved that his precious voice shall not vary much from a dull monotone. There is a saying of the Master's which it would be well for them to consider. "He that saveth-that is, shall wish to save his life, shall lose it."-Clarke. It would not be wonderful-indeed, we fully believe-that if the record could be made, it would be found that the men who have studied most to "take it easy "--who have refused their strength, their life, their all to the cause of Christ-had been the earliest to fill their graves; while the men who have toiled the hardest have, in the majority of instances, toiled the longest. We would not assert this positively, but we have strong convictions on this subject, based upon facts within the reach of all, and upon a somewhat careful and lengthened observation. Surely Paul lived to be "the aged," notwithstanding all his toils and trials; Peter was far advanced in years before his martyrdom; and John, the beloved disciple, was a nonagenarian. Very many of our fathers in the ministry, amid all their privations, exposures, and labors, lived on to fourscore years; and many of the hardest workers of the present generation bid fair for a good and a green old age. All honor to these from the Church on earth, while jeweled diadems are awaiting them in the skies! But these easy ministers will run no risks, and if they have inherited wealth or acquired it by marriage, a very slight indisposition will send them to Europe, or to a life of retiracy in inglorious ease.

It could hardly be expected that such a minister would do much in the pastoral work. He will plead that he is "constitutionally unfitted for it," or that he has no time to attend to it, or that it would be "too great a tax upon his physical energies." True, there are a few families where he spends, in the aggregate, days and weeks. There are stores, offices, and other public places where he delights to resort, either joining in political debates, or mingling in neighborhood gossip, or retailing stale anecdotes and jokes to the present merriment of