PROFESSOR BLACKIE'S PULPIT REFORM BILL.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE has just brought to the front, again, the familar but not worn-out theme of Pulpit Reform, and has introduced it with all his characteristic freshness and enthusiasm. Like many others who have been occupants of the "pew" all their days, he has the advantage of carrying an ideal of pulpit efficiency about with him which has not been rudely marred by personal effort to convert it into hard and substantial matter of fact: but, unlike many others, he is willing to let us profit by this ideal; and therefore, first in a speech reported in a newspaper, and then in a letter, he gives us the measures of his " Pulpit Reform" Bill.

It is always extremely interesting to us to hear the opinion of the Pew. We wish we heard it oftener, and could more frequently profit by the advice of those who, like Professor Blackie, are well able not only to form ideas on pulpit work, but also to express them clearly and forcibly.

The reform projected is in two directions. The first section of the Bill is based on an indictment thus expressed: "Our sermons were too vague and too weakly. They were like toddy composed of one-tenth of whisky and nine-tenths of water. But what he had said was said out of pure love to the clergy. He knew they laboured and groaned under the multitude of sins; but they did not come down sufficiently, or with sufficient force, on the besetting sins of the people. He sometimes thought he had mistaken his calling in not being a preacher. He would certainly have come thump down on their besetting sins."

Professor Blackie is not alone in thinking that the best method of curing sin is to "come thump down upon it." Nor is he altogether wrong. There are "respectable" sins that need "thumping," and will bear it; but it will not follow that thumping has killed them. Rarey, I believe, proved that "thumping" is not the best way of training a horse. Certainly a little of it is sufficient for most children; and still less for grown men and women. But almost all young preachers agree with the Professor, and generally pass through a fever in which they eagerly avail themselves of every opportunity of coming "thump down on the besetting sins of men." It was a characteristic feature of the sermons made at College in my day; and I have observed the same element abounding since, in the productions of most young preachers of energy and decision. But actual experience soon corrects all that. It is found that the "thumping" process is not always curative; that it tends to drive in self-despair and hopelessness, and fills the soul with a deepening anguish, and covers it with a thickening melancholy. Hollow formalists and treble-dyed hypocrites are not so numerous as men and women who feel the weight and pressure of sin, and tremblingly seek the means by which they may rid themselves first of their fears and apprehensions, and then of their weakness. Life urges in upon men the feeling of personal defect and wrong: sorrow and trial quicken the movements of conscience, and they come and listen, already sore and bruised with the actual "thumping" of life, and need rather to hear some wise Barnabas, some son of consolation, gifted with tenderness and real sympathy, speaking of the ever present help of that brave Victor over all evilChrist Jesus, our elder Brother and efficient helper.

The voice from the pew, cited in the preface to the fourth volume of Robertson's Sermons, has a truer and more human, and therefore more divine ring. "We come day after day to God's house, and the most careless one of us there, is still one who if he could really hear a word from God to his own soul would listen to it-ay, and be thankful for it. No heart can tell out to another what waves of temptation have been struggled through during the week past-with what doubtful success. How, after the soul has been beaten back and defiled, with what bitter anguish of spirit it has awoke to a knowledge of its backslidings and its bondage to sin-not to this or that sin merely, but to a general sense of sinfulness pervading the whole man, so that Redemption would be indeed a joyful sound." And again, and to this we can add our well-founded witness, "Many a weary and heavy-laden soul has taken his burden to the Saviour because he has found some man of 'like passions with himself,' who has suffered as he has, and found relief. I think a bold, faithful, experimental preaching rarely fails to hit some mark; and oftentimes God's Spirit witnesses to the truth of what is said, by working this and that man to the feeling, Why I, too, have been agonizing and falling and crying for just such help as this. Ah, this man has indeed something to say to me.""

Sympathy has more help and victory in it than "thumping." Warnings, denunciations, and stinging rebukes are needed here and there; but speaking of the pulpit generally, I do not think it has too much hope in it. It is safer, though it may not seem so, to tell Christian men of their vocation than of their shortcomings, and to picture the high and ennobling destiny of the sons of God, and the ever-urging help at hand for its realisation, than to whip with thongs of sarcasm, and cut to the quick with descriptions of immoralities and unbeliefs. This is the Christlike, the Divine way of inciting men to a relentless war with sin.

But the principal item in the Professor's Pulpit Reform Bill, is the silencing of the present staff of preachers by restricting their functions to those of a pastoral and parochial order, such as visiting, marrying, burying, and the like; and the institution of an order of "perambulating apostles or evangelists," who shall be men of special preaching gifts, well equipped and well trained, and shall confirm the churches by preaching say once a month to each community. In criticising this suggestion, we do not wish to be understood as taking much exception to the statement that the sermons of the day "are like toddy composed of one-tenth of whisky and nine-tenths of water"-whatever that may be we no not know, having a preference for toddy where all the tenths are water; but we admit that many sermons are weak and vague.". We will also allow that by "the present system the brain of the young preacher is wasted in the hebdomadal concoction of a routine of pious generalities, which have a tendency to smother thinking and to strangle study in the performer;" though we cannot forget that the system has been endured by some of the best brains of this generation, and that they are more productive of good, manly, strong, and helpful thinking than ever.

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Still, in all conscience, weak and vapid sermons are plentiful enough; and, no doubt, one cause of the weakness is, that so many have to be

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made out of the same mind, and from the same unincreasing stock of materials. It is time this was understood in these islands: if repetition were enough to secure the mental acceptance of a statement, surely it would be understood. But will the silencing of all the preachers, and the monthly sermon from the perambulating apostle, be a sovereign cure ?

Not necessarily, for it might be that even your gifted perambulating apostle would after all only perambulate with the same wares everywhere, and instead of being a growing, large-souled, responsive-natured man, be an eloquent repeater, hawking about stale goods. Who has not heard of the perambulating apostle, who, meeting a commercial traveller in a railway carriage, and asking him as to the progress of trade, received for answer, "Well I should think I am doing better than you, doctor; for you have been selling two sparrows for a farthing all the week, and have not got rid of them yet:" said perambulating apostle having preached one sermon six times over in one week. Except in rare instances, Professor Blackie's plan would ruin his "perambulating apostle;" for nothing slays men so swiftly and surely as lack of demand, of urgent demand for work.

Far more successful would it be to give a man an audience composed of Professor Blackies all the year round, than to send a gifted apostle perambulating the country, preaching to people concerning whose demands he has no special knowledge, and in whom he takes the vaguest interest. Of course you would kill your preacher to the professors; but that would not matter, the preacher would be no "humdrum homilist or crude theologer," but a man giving real effective stuff.

System for system, we do not doubt, from all that is known of human nature and how it is moved, that the advantages are with the fixed and not with the "perambulating apostle" method. The average of excellence is higher; the stimuli to brain work are more numerous and powerful; the depraving tendencies are fewer and feebler; and the usefulness to the church and the world is much greater.

The cure for the evils of the present system is not in the direction Professor Blackie points. It is this: keep the present system, but diminish the number of sermons at once. Knock out the mid-week sermon, and have a service for Christian fellowship instead. Get done with that at once; or if that cannot be done, or is in any place undesirable, relegate it to others, men of business, or men of leisure, who only need exercise to prove that they have gifts.

Carry the same principle into the Sunday services. Increase the number of preaching elders. Why should we restrict this work to one? Is there no "College" for training preachers and expounders of the Word besides the theological? Isn't the world itself a university; and do not men learn in its classes lessons of large human wisdom for the help of their fellows? Why shouldn't Professor Blackie have the opportunity of coming "thump down on men's besetting sins?" Who locks the pulpit door against him? Would that all the churches north and south of the Tweed too, could rid themselves of the miserable fetishism that restricts preaching to self-styled "ordained" men, and that relief to the hard-worked and jaded pastor might come in large measure from the sensible, thinking, and godly men that abound amongst us.

Another point to be urged is the need of more and longer seasons of rest. The demand for real and effective thought is increasing every year; and men who mean to do good work must have quiet to think. We need to go, as Professor Blackie says,

"Away from the whirling and wheeling,

And steaming above and below;

Where the heart has no leisure for feeling,
And thought has no quiet to grow."

Besides multiplying preaching elders, we might help ourselves and the people much by introducing a regular and thorough exposition into the service, and shortening the sermon to give it place. This work, if well done, would secure freshness of teaching, width of range, and contact with the purest thought of God; and it would facilitate compression, point, and pungency in the discourse.

JOHN CLIFFORD.

CHURCH AND STATE IN ENGLAND.

No. II.-Political Establishment, or Christian Church?

We know where to find the STATE. Can we say as much concerning the National Church, and assert, without a doubt, "Here is the Spiritual Church of England ?" The question, "Is the Church of England worth preserving?" has been raised by one who is the greatest "political churchman" of the age; yet it is observable that nothing is said in the inquiry as to the whereabouts of the "Church," or "Ecclesia," properly so-called. The nominal question is the preserving of the Church; the real question is the preserving of those Acts of Parliament, and common law rights and precedents which govern the conduct of public worship in certain edifices. Surely it is not true that to preserve the Church is identically the same thing as preserving tithes and State-patronage ! To preserve the Church suggests the opposite idea. In what way would the nation act if it were undesirable for it to preserve the Church of England?

If the Church of England is similar to the churches referred to in the New Testament, it is sustained by the Holy Spirit. Such churches throve when pagan Rome persecuted with fire and sword. Pallas, the powerful Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Emperor Claudius, must have known something of Christianity, he was brother to Felix, before whom Paul was tried. Can the reader fancy this pagan minister of state asking, "Is the Church in Rome worth preserving?" Would Paul have smiled at the idea or trembled in suspense lest Pallas should answer "No?" Is it not a fact that hungry lions and leopards were trained to thirst for the blood of Christians; yet, in spite of the myriad woes heaped upon the church it was still preserved," Pallas and Agrippina notwithstanding? The way in which this question has been discussed implies that the "preserving" depends upon the legislature. Where is the indestructible body similar to that which the Holy Spirit preserved in Rome in spite of principalities and powers? Where is that dignified element which is spiritual

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CHURCH AND STATE IN ENGLAND.

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and separated from all occupying such a low position that a passing politician may pick it up as if it were a musty parchment, and ask, "Is it worth preserving ?" Where is the "Ecclesia" of the children of the Great Father who have responded to a "calling out," or ek-kaleo.

Who are the members of the Church of England subject to spiritual discipline?

There are the clergy-they sign the Thirty-nine Articles, and are supposed to believe something, at least. They are liable to be disciplined if they get careless. But are these all?

The communicants. Yes, there are the communicants, it is true; but are they subject to discipline-can they be excommunicated? Excommunication would prevent a person being able to do any citizen duties, or even to sue for a debt. The Church of England cannot entail these consequences upon communicants, therefore the power of excommunication has lapsed, or been superseded. The communicants have a fixed creed-do they not repeat the Athanasian Creed and the Apostle's Creed? But let us not be too fast; it would never do for mere repetition of a creed to be a test of belief, or our ritualistic parson, with his many-coloured robes, would be in danger of being out done by the still more parti-coloured parrot of the sexton! Communicants believe the creeds, do they? Who is Dean Stanley, of Westminster Abbey, that never goes to church on days when the Athanasian Creed must be read? Can all communicants say that except every one keep their particular faith "he shall perish everlastingly?" But we have the Apostles' Creed, so called, because "the Twelve" never saw it or heard of it. The first declaration is that the Father, or first Person in the Trinity, is "Maker of heaven and earth." The apostle John ascribes creation to Jesus, "by whom all things were made." Can all communicants say, "Never mind what the apostle John says, we believe the creed?" If not, it can never be said that communicants, as such, have a particular creed; and it follows that no discipline can be exercised upon them on account of the creed.

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The Baptized. Are these the members of the Church of England? A short time since an influential Ritualistic lady gratuitously informed the writer's nurse that the baby was a little heathen." If this is the division, and if as the Burial Service says-and, be it remembered, that service is part of an Act of Parliament-all who are baptized are dear brothers" or "sisters," buried in "sure and certain hope," we have at last a definite line. The baptized, even if sprinkled by a nurse woman outside the apostolic succession, are members. But is this the spiritual body composing the Church of England-the Burial Service says so. Then the convicts, the sceptics, the infidels, and all the heterogeneous mass christened in infancy, whether dissenters or not, are members of the Church of England!" "Infidels and rogues inside, and only the poor Quakers outside-no wonder they have been called Quakers after such a leaving out in the cold!

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If the Church of England does not consist in the priests alone, whom does it consist of, short of the whole nation? Church AND State is, therefore, a misnomer. Just as "Construct State" in Hebrew Grammar signifies a kind of genitive or possessive case, so it would