are thoroughly educated, accomplished in reason and eloquence, they will be unwilling to go into the uncultivated parts of the earth and encounter the uncongenial materials which will there meet them to afflict their taste and try their patience. An objection of this sort is better adapted to excite a smile, than any serious apprehension, that the great field will be deserted by the men who shall be qualified to occupy it. The result will be directly the opposite; for it is unquestionably true, that the more the sanctified mind is raised by education, and enlarged by discipline, the more implicitly does it bow to the dictates of duty; the higher christian young men are elevated by study, the broader will be the scope of their vision, and the sweep of their benevolent affections. And as they will see further, and feel more deeply and nobly, they will go forth more widely to the perilous work. Thus learning, instead of creating a reluctance on the question of self-denying service, will create a pleasing promptitude, which will conduce to bring the weightiest intellects, into the most rugged fields.

Working men are called for in the book before us, men of a docile, humble, self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit: WORKING MEN, those who will not only work hard, but any where the Lord Jesus would have them to be. It is a great question to settle, involving immense interests and responsibilities, where shall we labor? There has been a time when the field was comparatively very limited. The candidate had little more to do, than to look over the list of vacant parishes in his native State, and obtain, if he could, the nearest, the most peaceable, and the most comfortable of them. Now he has something more to do; he has to decide with the map of the world before him; a map that almost speaks from every continent and island, as he glances across its dark surface, and says, "Come over and help us." A decision on this broad scale, unbiassed by interest or ease, is the duty of every candidate for the sacred office. Let him proceed with prayer in every stage of the inquiry, and with a heart warmed and enlarged with holy love. Let the decision be made in an atmosphere of light, and with christian manliness and sobriety. If it be to go to the heathen, let it be maturely intelligent, profoundly digested, such as the individual will never wish to retract, whatever roughnesses he may meet, whatever discouragements may assail him, through whatever midnight scenes of depression and adversity he may be called to wade. If the decision be to stay at home, let it

be made on such principles, and in view of such considerations, that the mind will be at peace on the point in all coming years; so that every retrospect will be attended with the assurance, that it was made in the fear of God and the love of men. Some ministers, after a comfortable settlement, have been troubled with the conviction that they are not where they ought to be. The claims of a dying world have so pressed upon their heart and conscience, as to give them no rest; and they have been constrained to renew their investigations of duty, and in some instances, to tear themselves from the dearest and most sacred associations.

We want men who will meet this question, and decide it unbiassed by considerations of reputation, interest, or ease; men who will bring to it, and maintain through the whole inquiry, great strength and robustness of purpose. For in almost every renewed heart, there are some sentiments and feelings lurking, which are ready to turn traitors to Jesus Christ on every unpleasant pressure of obligation. These must be put under an interdict of silence, until the question of service to the world is finally settled. The whole inner man should be consolidated into one inflexible determination to go where duty dictates, be it to the most distant wilds, or to the most ferocious heathenism. Unless there be determination of this sort; a deep, considerate, and holy resoluteness, it will happen, that comfort, country, or friends will decoy the heart to some selfish conclusion.

Humbleness is an attribute, at present, much needed in the ministerial character. We do not mean, merely, that humbleness which will make sweeping confessions, and seem very lowly before God. We mean something beyond this, something immensely more difficult. It is the spirit which makes a man willing to put himself out of sight, if he only can do more good by never being seen. It is the spirit which makes a person willing not only to go any where, but to be any thing, if souls will become holy the faster for it. There is a manifest deficiency of this sort of spirit. We have swerved from the pattern of our Lord. Too many things are ostentatiously done. Too much is thought of conspicuousness of station; of the fame of the field; not what we may make it by God's blessing; but what it is in the estimation of our fellow men. Let there be a correction on this point. The exigencies of a dying world demand it. Let all aspiring sentiments be banished as barriers to the progress of redemption. Let there be cherished instead, a low

ly, self-sinking, self-sacrificing spirit. Let there come forward a race of ministers who will realize this arduous standard, humble, fervent, heroic, toilsome men, who wait for their reward in heaven, and a mighty impulse will be imparted to the cause of God. The Lord Jesus will be receiving his empire on earth, much faster than he has ever yet done, since the primitive times. A great deal will be accomplished by men of this stamp, because they will be immediately and always at work. There will be no idlers amongst them; none lingering long in rusty inaction, to learn, as is pretended, the leadings of Providence. There have been such, complete hangers-on. We have seen them hovering around some comfortable centre, waiting, it would seem, long and patiently, for a place in which to do good. How strange! A minister of Jesus Christ, waiting for a place to do good, in such a world as this. In all such cases, we can hardly help thinking, that it is not for a place to do good, that he is waiting, but for a good place. And while he lingers, he is injuring himself. The mere fact, that he is so long to be had, is proof that he is poorly worth having. Assuredly 'such men are not wanted in these times of toil and enterprise; but men of heart, and faith, and irrepressible energy; who feel at ease, only when they are at work; and who will be out somewhere, the moment they are prepared, laboring with their might for God, and for souls.

Another attribute in the ministry, which the book before us affirms and enforces as needful in the present day, is PRACTICAL TALENT. "We want men," says Dr. Cox, "that can execute and achieve; men that understand a little, the work they have to do all the days of their life; men skilled in the science of human nature as it is; knowing what it ought to be; conversant with things; commanding in manner; versatile in methods of address, and largely influential in their ministrations; men whose weight is felt, whose character is brought to bear on others, and who inspire a kindred sympathy in listening hundreds, ... men who desire usefulness more than the name of it, because they love God, and because they love men who are after the similitude of God."

To be efficiently practical, it is necessary that ministers be endowed liberally with that sterling property, common sense. Then they will succeed in adjusting themselves to circumstances and to men. They will know how to variate their demeanor and address, so as to reach readily and effectually those they

happen to be dealing with. We have an example of this innocent and salutary accommodation, in Paul: Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ) that I might gain them that are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might by all means gain some.

It is a great thing to know how to present truth, so that it shall be most effectual in its office of sanctification. It requires a deep insight into man, in all his states, of sin and ignorance, of interest, prejudice and passion, and in all his stages of culture and refinement. It requires accurate acquaintance with the laws of mental and moral action; and great shrewdness in adapting the message to the mass to be moved, and the end to be gained. Ministers are wanted who are skilled in this knowledge of men and this facility of adjustment to varying characters and circumstances.

Ministers are too much inclined to prosecute one undeviating method of doing things. This is well within certain limits. But it is carried too far. It goes often into the business of preaching, and imparts dulness to the efforts for winning souls to Christ. The sermons are sound, full of thought, replete with instruction, all adjusted in logical order, and with rhetorical skill. Every part is placed as the book directs, and the whole is constructed with the accuracy of the square and compass. When completed, they are elaborate and noble sermons; but when delivered, somehow or other, they fail in doing Christ's work on the souls of men. The difficulty is not, that it is a written sermon. A written sermon may be charged high with feeling and power; every sentence may be an arrow with barbed and sharpened point. The difficulty is, that it is not adapted to the souls that hear it; it is not adjusted so as to meet the responses of nature and conscience, in the breasts of the audience. It falls upon the ear, but finds no passage to the heart. On this point much remains to be learned. As yet, but little is known about it. We want men who will study the matter and not leave it, till they learn the style of thought and address, of illustration and language, which will go most directly into plain men's bosoms; and who, when they learn, will condescend to use it. True, it will cost the sacrifice of some scholarly notions, the VOL. IX. No. 25.

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yielding of some stately words, and well turned periods; the withering of some flowers, and the defacing of some beauties. It may even cost, in some respects, rebellion against the authority of rule and the despotism of books. But preachers must do it, if they would do good to the population, that is now taking its turn to live on this globe. We are not pleading for a wild and ranting eccentricity, nor for a debasing of truth by vulgar admixtures; but for a sound, well disciplined common sense, to guide in the establishing of its positions, and in the pressure of its appeals. Men, at the present day, will not be converted by philosophy, nor by fine writing, nor by graceful speaking. These are good in their place; but the gospel, thrown into a living form of pungency and power, is better than the whole of them. Ministers must take the naked gospel, and go forth, and preach Jesus Christ, the atonement, and eternity to busy men, with the same tact and earnestness with which these men preach the world in the heat of a bargain.

Let there then be more fervent men raised up among us; not shallow, noisy men; but deep as well as rapid, men of light as well as heat, of vigorous logic, as well as glowing passion. "Eloquence," said one who is a practitioner in the matter, "is logic set on fire." This is what is wanted to melt and burn away the empire of Satan. We want both the logic and the fire; strong, intense, ready men, who can make a sermon at any time, any where, any how; who have knowledge, and can use it; who have souls, and can throw them out, and throw out with them truth, in heavy and glowing masses, in just such order and shape as will come with most power to the souls that are in the way of it. Said Rowland Hill to his Welsh curate, "never mind breaking grammar, if you can only break hearts." We do not advocate a propensity to blunder; accuracy is far better; but there is much good sense in this direction. It means that ministers must risk something, if they would ever be any thing, or ever do anything. After they have piled up their shining stores of knowledge, and they cannot pile them too high, let them impregnate the mass with the fires of holy passion, throw away the shackles of a timorous and benumbing restraint, in faith and prayer commit themselves to God, go forth and do good as circumstances require, and as fast as they can.

But whilst ministers are wanted who, in some respects, are pliable and yielding, who have the tact of a ready adaptation to men and circumstances; in other respects, they should be un