ture, namely, that ALL PREACHING OUGHT TO BE EVANGELICAL.

Several topics that might properly be introduced under this head, will be reserved for another place. The considerations which I have now to suggest, are chiefly two:

1. That evangelical preaching might REASONABLY BE EXPECTED to answer, better than any other, the great ends of preaching. What are these ends? The glory of God in the sanctification and salvation of sinners. How then are sinners to be sanctified and saved? By knowing and embracing the system of truth which God has revealed in the gospel, and commanded his ministers to publish. And can it be that the system which infinite wisdom has devised, for a given purpose, is no better adapted to promote that purpose than an opposite system, or no system at all? Will men be induced to receive and love the doctrines of grace, by the influence of that pulpit which never exhibits these doctrines? Will they be induced to flee for refuge to the cross, by preaching which never urges upon them "Christ and him crucified?"

Let us now glance at some of the principal points of the evangelical system, and see why these are adapted to give special interest and success to preaching.

This system shows men that with God, the heart, and not (as they are presumingly inclined to suppose,) the external conduct, is the standard of moral character...

It shows them that the heart of the unsanctified man is ' very far gone from original righteousness,' that it is his own heart, and he is personally responsible to God, for all its wrong affections; that eternal death is the just desert of every sinner, because the law which he has broken is "holy, just, and good," and one which he is bound to obey perfectly, and with all his heart, Let

us pause here for a moment. The above doctrines, if they are solemnly urged home upon the conscience, it is easy to see, must make men feel guilty and therefore feel unsafe. They must disturb the deadly insensibility in which careless men love to repose, and produce solicitude and alarm. But let them be taught, and let them embrace any system of lax theology which allows them to deny their own depravity; let them become persuaded that sin is merely human infirmity,' and that sinners are but the frail and erring children of their heavenly Father,' (for so men have often been instructed from the pulpit,) and they feel no trembling apprehension of the "fire that shall never be quenched," no deep solicitude, to "flee from the wrath to come.'

But to proceed with our enumeration-The evangelical system shows men, that from the fearful curse and condemnation, which rest on every transgressor of the divine law, no one can escape, on the ground of any satisfaction which he himself is able to make. It shows them that Christ has interposed, for the rescue of lost men from this desperate condition, by the sacrifice of himself on the cross; that repentance and faith are now the indispensable and immediate duty of every sinner, to whom the gospel is known: but still, that the stubborn hostility of the carnal mind to this gospel is such, that no sinner will cordially embrace it, except through the transforming influence of the Holy Ghost.

Take the foregoing particulars, and follow them out, in reference to the principle I am illustrating, and suppose the combined influence of these truths to bear down upon the heart and conscience, in the weekly ministrations of the pulpit, and it will be most evident that the hearers of such preaching can hardly remain in total indifference to religion, The direct tendency is, to make

them solemn and anxious; to show them their dependence on a justly offended God; and to keep constantly before the mind the great question, 'Am I in a state of salvation, or in a state of wrath?' Such effects may be -reasonably expected to result from preaching, which exhibits with power and pungency the holy strictness of -the law, and the love of a dying Saviour.

But we need not rest this argument on any abstract tendency of evangelical preaching; for

2. Another source of evidence remains, which is decisive, the evidence of FACTS. From this it appears that the preaching of the evangelical system, is attended with a salutary and sanctifying efficacy, which belongs to no other system. The question becomes one of historical verity, on which the proof is so ample and triumphant, as greatly to exceed the limits that can be allotted to it in this discussion.

The ground which I take is, that God has usually attended the faithful preaching of the gospel with a signal success, through the influence of his own Spirit; and that he has thus set upon it the unquestionable and special stamp of his own approbation. In proof of this, the recorded experience of the church may be adduced, in one accumulated and overwhelming testimony. If this cannot be established by an unbroken line of facts from the Apostles' days, no point can ever be proved by history.

What was it that occasioned the first great declension from the spirit of godliness in the primitive church? The simple gospel, as it was preached by Christ and the Apostles, was obscured by admixtures of human speculations, especially the theories of the Platonic philosophy. Instead of Christ crucified, the subtilties of the schools gradually came to occupy the pulpit. Sermons

were moulded on the elaborate precepts of Grecian oratory. The spirit of piety was supplanted by love of novelty, and by the vagrant dreaming of mystical theology, founded on the grossest perversion of the sacred oracles. What was the consequence? When this wide door was opened, Pelagianism and Arianism rushed in, like a flood, upon the church.

Now let any honest man, acquainted with history, be put to answer the question, who were the great moral luminaries that beamed upon the world, through seasons of intervening darkness? and he cannot fail to name such champions of the evangelical faith, as Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom; afterwards, Bernard, Huss, Jerome of Prague, Wickliffe; and the constellation of illustrious reformers, in the time of Luther. I need scarcely add, that the state of the church in later periods confirms the same sentiment.

IN the foregoing lecture, I endeavoured to show that from the nature of the case, and from the actual state of facts in the history of the church, we have no reason to expect the blessing of God, on any preaching but that which is distinctly evangelical. But other things are requisite to constitute a good sermon, and I shall now consider, at some length,

A SECOND, general characteristic of a good sermon, which is, that IT MUST BE INSTRUCTIVE.

For the sake of method, I shall inquire,

1. WHAT THINGS ARE REQUISITE to render a sermon instructive.

1. In the first place, then, I say it must have a subject that is important; a subject that spreads before the hearers some serious truth to be believed, or duty to be done, or danger to be avoided. So obvious is this principle, that to dwell on it, or even to mention it, would seem superfluous, were it not that many a discourse has been preached, in which it is apparently the object of the preacher, not so much to enlighten his hearers, as to any one thing to be believed, or done, or avoided, as to fill up the time allotted to a sermon. follows that a sermon is a good one, state in a word, or in a short sentence,

It by no means because you can that it is on the