plies on the lands he has come to conquer. But if he depends upon himself for inspiration, and upon his previous reflections for the words he shall speak, he will fail. The method and order of the written discourse, and the freedom that belongs to extempore speaking, will alike be wanting, and the result will excite the dislike once expressed for things neither cold nor hot.

One secret of their success who are eminent as extempore speakers is their willingness to fail. They never grow excited lest the oil in the cruse should fail ere the half hour is out. We have heard such men when their discourses were far below the average preaching in our pulpits, but they submitted cheerfully to the inevitable, and were content to obtain general success with occasional failure. An extempore performance is so liable to be affected by the moods of the speaker, and by the circumstances of the hearers, that it is impossible to know beforehand what measure of success shall be secured, nor need we inquire if satisfied that the method on the whole is the best.

When he who deceives the nations shall be bound in the bottomless pit, there will go with him, we trust, that hurtful delusion, that the art of speaking is of little consequence comparatively, and that our great effort should be to get thoughts. But thoughts poorly expressed effect but little. We have seen preachers of very ordinary thinking power, eminent for their effectiveness in the pulpit. They so speak the word that multitudes both of the Jews and Greek believe. Their small shot go further into the oaken hearts of their hearers than do the bullets of their stronger brethren. This may be humbling to our pride, but the fact cannot be questioned. Our government is not satisfied with getting the best ammunition and guns of the most approved pattern. Time and money are freely spent in the practice of gunnery, that they may use with the greatest effect their weapons. It was by means of this practice that our sailors were able at the distance of more than a mile to hit the Alabama with every shot, and send her a riddled hulk to the bottom. Should not every minister patiently and persistently study any art by which he may most effectively commend the message he has received to those for whose welfare he watches as one that must give account.

No one rule can be laid down for all. There are, doubtless, those whose delivery is rendered more natural and effective by the use of notes, and whose thoughts lose none of their ease and naturalness by being committed to writing. Members of Yale College forty years ago, have not forgotten the ready and eloquent utterances of Prof. Fitch, when his carefully prepared manuscript was before him, and how, when he ventured away from it, he sunk into utter mental helplessness. Each one must decide to which he is best adapted, but the judg ment can scarcely fail to be affected by the almost universal practice in vogue among us. That preachers fail in both methods, is not questioned, but the failure in one case is not as apparent as the other. If the written sermon is ineffective, the fact is not apparent on the instant. Its delivery fills up the hour, and all goes smoothly on, while the lost train of thought, the hesitating expression, and the possible collapse ere the message is finished, have terrors that few can brave and to the possibility of encountering which few have the courage to expose themselves.

We think that almost every preacher is conscious of a manner in the pulpit that lacks the naturalness and vigor that in other places he exhibits. He knows that the theme chosen is important, that its unfolding is adapted to benefit his hearers. He foresees that friends will sit in ranks before him who have come to be benefited; some, it may be, to be savingly impressed. When he considers what he has to say, and who they are that shall come to hear, the work before him seems most attractive, and with willing feet he hastens to the place of prayer; but somehow, when he enters upon the service, he unwittingly stiffens into a formality that often gives him the appearance of performing a task, and he fails to get near to those whom he most earnestly desires to reach and to benefit.

We have witnessed the transformation wrought upon a horse by a temporary escape from accustomed restraints. His infirmi ties forgotten, with head erect, his neck clothed with thunder, neighing like the war-horse when he snuffs the battle, every movement is full of life and beauty. But when the hour of service arrives, and, secured in the corner of a fence, the halter is replaced, he shambles along the image of propriety and life

lessness. So have we seen men, bright, ready, electric everywhere but in the place where these gifts were made to shine. And all this when the associations of the place would seem to call forth resistlessly every power. Why this is, we will not attempt to explain. But to search persistently for the right method is plainly our duty, and our faintest approach to it we would welcome as the special gift of God.

We would not for a moment join in that very senseless cry against the ministry, past and present, which some are so fond of raising. We do not believe that the world never heard preaching till, in the fullness of time, we were born and brought out. No one can look at the condition of society in New England, and examine the influences out of which it has arisen, without acknowledging the vast and beneficent power of its ministry. To every true interest of society, it has lent its ready and efficient aid. It has labored wisely and well for the diffusion of a gospel profitable unto all things. What it has done so well, it should by all means attempt to do better.

ARTICLE VI. - DOCTRINAL CREEDS AS TESTS OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

"FATHER" NEWMAN, in that polemic of masterly English, the Apologia pro vita sua, alluding to the sentimental tendencies which he deplored in the Anglican Church, remarks with great force, that if Christianity is not a dogma it is nothing.

We accept this statement. An undoctrinal Christianity would be as powerless as a State without laws, and could command neither the conscience nor the intelligence of the world. At least such a religion would, most decidedly, not be Christianity, which above all faiths possesses the elements of a doctrinal system, and might part as easily with its miracles as with its body of divine truth. So important is this thread of doctrine in the fabric of Christianity, that we can but sympathize, at least, with the general purpose of every attempt to maintain it. We should be slow to attack a custom which had served in the past for the defence of the faith, and the loss of which might even for a time have an unfavorable influence on the grounding of our congregations in divine truth. Veteran customs, like veteran soldiers, require a certain amount of reverential treatment after their active usefulness is gone, and it is good for a people to let them die a natural death, and in an honorable way, rather than to be impatient to hasten their decline.

These considerations apply to the subject we propose to discuss. The use of doctrinal creeds as tests of church membership is a time-honored custom in the family of churches to which we belong, and a custom too which permits us to speak only in admiring terms of the men who dared to adopt it. The doctrinal examinations which were set up in New England for the "trial of the spirits," were a part of that ideal of a church which never since the day of the apostles was set so high as by our fathers. However burdensome they may be to us, they were freedom to that race of founders, unconscious both of their own greatness and of the burden which they bore so lightly.

However objectionable such a practice may now be as a rule of perpetual obligation, it expressed then the convictions of the whole community, and was probably the only way in which their cherished ideas could operate with freedom; and as to the harmful elements of the method, to which we have grown so sensitive, the condition of things at the time rendered them to all intents inoperative.

All this which has been said above is, however, entirely consistent with the conviction which we entertain, that there is something both essentially and practically wrong in these doctrinal examinations of applicants at the door of the church. We believe that the continuation of this practice would be unfavorable to the maintenance of that high standard of intelligent and orthodox belief of which it is supposed by many to be a solid support. It may be that in the transformations. which social and religious life undergo in the process of time, the ancient custom is not working as it once did. It may be that the present condition of things in the world enables us to discover what is wrong a little more plainly. At all events, we believe that the practice to which we refer is both objectionable in itself, and injurious to the faith of the people, and we propose to show the grounds on which this conviction rests. It may have a strange sound to some ears to be told that these ancient defences of orthodoxy endanger the cause they were designed to promote. We believe it can be shown that they do.

Not that creeds are useless or mischievous in themselves. We believe in creeds, and in systematic doctrine, and in the noble science of theology. Christendom deeply needs the aid which is to be obtained from these sources, and we say once for all that we yield to none in our conception of the importance and prominence which is to be given to such things as these in the right administration of a Congregational church. But we protest against the practice of requiring assent to any system of doctrine, whether longer or shorter, as a condition precedent to admission into the church.

We use the expression system of doctrine, and we do so advisedly, for we wish our readers to know accurately to what we object. There is something doctrinal in the simplest faith. in Christ. In a sense, Christ himself is a doctrine, as, for ex