ADVERTISEMENT. THE Discourse, the substance of which, by request, I hereby offer to the public, was a hasty, extemporaneous performance, given to the congregation which for a few sabbaths has assembled at Lyceum Hall, without the remotest idea to publication. In preparing it for the press, I have felt it my duty, to reproduce it with as much fidelity as possible. This must be my apology for suffering a Discourse to be printed, so imperfect in its form and dress as I know this to be. The subject matter of this Discourse, however, has long occupied my thoughts, and I may say, I have here given some of the results to which I have arrived only after years of close application, varied experience, and intense thought. I ask, therefore, for my statement, that respect, that attention, which every man has a right to claim, when he speaks on that which has been his favorite topic of study, and to the investigation of which he has given his best moral and intellectual energies. I speak without reserve of the object I am anxious to accomplish, because it is not my object. I stand in awe before it, and ask "who is sufficient for it?" That I wish to effect some changes in the mode of dispensing Christian truth, that I do contemplate great moral and social alterations, meliorations, I would say, as the effect of new views of Christianity clearly exhibited and fearlessly defended, I have no disposition to deny. Neither the state of morality, nor of society, comes up to my ideal of the perfect, nor of the possible. Christ, as the manifestation of God, does not seem to me as yet to be formed, to any great extent, in either the individual or the social heart; but I would have him, and I believe he may and will be incarnated in the heart of every man, and in the universal heart of humanity. With regard to the charge of radicalism, which some have thrown out against myself and my friends, I have only to remark that the same word by contending parties is often, perhaps generally, taken in different senses; and that as I and my friends understand the word radical, we have no objection to be called radicals; but as the term is generally understood by the community, it cannot be justly applied to us. We are not destructionists. We do not touch the rights of property, and would not, except to render them more secure. We are, Xindeed, levellers, but we would level upward, not downward. We see no one too high, too great, too learned, too refined, or too good, and the extent of our radicalism is to bring up the low, and place every man, if possible, in such a position, that he can fulfil the great end of his being. DISCOURSE. THE APOSTLE PAUL remarks in one of his Letters, that he became all things to all men, that he might gain some. From this, it has been inferred, that he varied his opinions, and shaped his doctrines to suit the views of those he chanced to address. But he probably meant to assert nothing more than that he adapted himself to all capacities, and to the peculiar wants of those to whom he preached. I allude to this remark of Paul, for the purpose of obtaining a principle which ought to preside over all instruction, and which is applicable to all times and places. This principle is, that we should always consult the wants of our age, and especially of the community to which we address ourselves. What is very proper to preach at one time, in one country, to one description of persons, may be very improper at another. Instruction must change with the changes of time and the progress of events, or it will fail to reach the mind or influence the heart. The age, and especially the country, in which we live, are peculiar. They, therefore, require a peculiar kind of instruction, and, I may say, a peculiar mode of dispensing Christian truth. They are unlike any which have preceded us. They are new, and consequently demand what I have called a new Dispensation of Christianity, a dispensation in perfect harmony with the new order of things which has sprung into existence. Yet of this fact we seem not to have been generally aware. The character of our religious institutions, the style of our preaching, the means we rely upon, for the production of the Christian virtues, are such as were adopted in a distant age, and fitted to wants which no longer exist, or which exist only in a greatly modified shape. It is to this fact that I attribute that other fact, of which I have heretofore spoken, that our churches are far from being filled, and that a large and an increasing portion of our community take very little interest in religious institutions, and manifest a most perfect indiffernce to religious instruction. These persons do not stay away from our churches, because they have no wish to be religious, no desire to meet and commune in the solemn Temple with their fellow men, and with the Great and Good Spirit which reigns everywhere around and within them. It is not because they do not value this communion, that they do not come into our churches, but because they do not find it in our churches. They cannot find, under the costume of our institutions, and our instructions, the FatherGod, to love and adore, with whom to hold sweet and invigorating communings; they are unable to find that sympathy of man with man, which they crave- to obtain that response to the warm affections of the heart, which would make them love to assemble together and bow together before one Common Altar. We may complain of people as much as we please for not attending public worship, for not laboring to sustain religious institutions, but they will not do it, to any great extent, unless their wants are met. They will not attend church, listen to preaching, unless they are interested, unless they are fed. If they do not find themselves fed in our churches, they will not attend them. When, therefore, we see large and increasing portions of a community staying away from church, showing themselves indifferent to everything bearing the name of religion, we may be assured that there is some defect in the form with which religion is clothed, or in the methods by which it is dispensed; and since this is obviously the fact with our country at the present moment, we may be assured that there are in our community religious wants which no denomination among us fully meets. The people are not really fed; their spiritual wants are unsupplied, and they are spiritually starving. I am for myself at no loss to account for this fact, to perceive in what this defect consists. I see much in our places of worship which is offensive to a large portion of the community. One pew is marked worth five hundred dollars, another at half that sum, another at a fourth, and another a free seat. Everybody is struggling for the highest priced pews, or counting them the most honorable seats, and nobody will sit in one of the free seats, unless he be willing to write himhimself down a pauper. The painful distance between the rich and the poor, the cause of so many heartburnings out of the temple, is thus preserved within it, where all should meet as equals before our common Father. It is unpleasant to see these distinctions in the house of God, and where they are not abolished, none but those who are able to occupy the high seats will be willing to appear. I wish they were abolished, so that there might be one spot on earth, where we might forget the factitious distinctions of an artificial society, and appear, as we are, children of the same Father, brothers and sisters of the same family. * * * |