Sermons on public worship, suited to the times

Dedication

TO THE REY. SAMUEL NOTT, D. D.

FRANKLIN, CONN.

My earliest and sweetest recollections are of my native hill, and of the pathway to the house of God, and of our way thither, and our blessings there, with those numbered with the dead and with the just made perfect — meeting the multitude who came Sabbath after Sabbath to worship God. Whatever blessings I have found in the house of prayer for all people; have ever seemed to flow from the sanctuary of my childhood and youth ; from under that serene sky, amidst that beautiful landscape, on those summer Sabbaths, "carried into the week," if, as we used to pray, they were. I am ready to believe that the memory and the vision will never die ; that the streams will never cease.

Preface

The methods, to be relied on for the extension and establishment of Christianity on the earth, must be permanent and all-pervading; such as meet the first dawn of thought, and accompany the whole discipline of life ; and such as can overspread communities and fill the whole world. Temporary and limited expedients, however promising they may seem at the time and place, carry with them the principle of their own disappointment. Happy, if disappointment bring us to value and welcome those which are permanent and all-pervading.

Such are public worship and the family, coeval with the race; the earliest institutions of Heaven for the welfare of men, fitted to each stage of divine mercy, and unfolding their capabilities still more and more at every advancement. We have nothing to invent — nothing to discover. The perfect methods are ready to our hands ; we shall do our utmost for the extension and establishment of Christianity when we faithfully employ them along our whole path of discipline, amidst the chances and changes of humanity. We shall be fully blessed only out of Zion, and see our children's children, and peace upon Israel. 1*

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The author has already applied himself to the Family, in his " Sermons for Children, designed to promote their immediate piety." The third volume, under the special title of "Religious Scenes," recognized the family as connected with public worship ; and, though at the distance of many years, may be regarded as the precursor of the present work.

The author's last publication, adapting itself to the commercial crisis of 1834, or, as may now be claimed, to years of pecuniary embarrassment, did but attempt to express the " Lessons of Faith beside the common path of life," which our Saviour bids us receive from " the fowls of the air, and the lilies of the field." The present volume is its proper counterpart, exalting the great public institution, which sustains and cherishes the discipline of common life — which gives the form and the power by which the whole path of life becomes a discipline for holiness — the wide world an open temple for the Lord ; and all time the season for his worship. They best meet their daily opportunity, who wait best in the courts of the Lord. "Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a well." The author trusts that those who welcomed the " Lessons of Faith beside the common path of life," will receive as its companion, these Lessons of the Sanctuary; and that wherever "Sermons on Public Worship " find favor, they will win an audience for " Sermons from the Fowls of the Air and the Lilies of the Field."

For the present work, then, certainly if he have any reason for publishing it at all, the author asks a welcome from the officers of public worship, and from the multitude, attendants or absentees, in every town, and village, and city in the land ; he would be almost bold enough to say in the wide world. And why not 1 when he endeavors to

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invigorate and exalt that great institution, which, like the Sabbath, " was made for man." Why not? when he but prompts and joins the mutual urgency of man on man, by which the whole earth will at length flow unto the Lord's house; when he but prompts and urges the method of the last days ; " Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord; to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths." And yet this work is as local and special as possible. With the widest possible design, the author begins at home, in connection with the actual state, and circumstances, and scenery of his own town's people; suiting himself to one time and place, that he may be the better suited to all. Nor this without the highest examples. The divine wisdom gives, in special cases and in local instances, its lessons to the world. The books of Deuteronomy and Hosea, of Corinthians and Ephesians — the discourses of our Lord and his apostles, were adjusted centuries ago, how minutely, to the places, and the people, and the times " that then were," and thus, best fitted to all places, and all people, and all times. The more local, the more characteristic, the more seemingly ephemeral, the more have they proved applicable to every place, and people, and time, and emergency, for thousands of years, and over the wide world. " Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Would that the author could imitate, in the humblest degree, the nice discernment, the exact application, the graphic description of the sacred models. Then should the urgency of a single township in the " Old Colony " apply itself to the ten thousand communities to which it is now offered. If in any degree we have suited our work to our own two thousand, it can suit itself to millions.

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Of course the work retains its original form — the form of the time and place of our original urgency — of public sermons ; and again we ask, why not 1 Why not urge to public worship, in the forms of public worship ? Why not make religious communications in their own peculiar and official forms? Alas, the question here asked, as if it admitted no answer, has been answered again and again in our ears, " Because the public consider sermons dull !" Sermons dull ! These sermons may be dull, or those — but not because they are sermons. They may be dull, if they proceed from minds which can prompt nothing but dulness in any form; and they may seem dull, though they are not, to minds utterly benumbed; but nothing can be more vivid, as nothing can be more characteristic and rich, than the true sermon. An address to a multitude of human beings on what touches their own business and bosoms for time and eternity, and connected with the whole history and relations of man, dull ! No form of human composition, and no purpose admits larger and richer illustrations from all nature and history ; none draws more deeply upon all the fountains of feeling in the human heart; none applies itself more aptly to all the experiences of men, to "the chances and changes of humanity;" none is more fraught with all the treasures of poetry and eloquence, of beauty and sublimity. . . . Strange, that with the finest of all forms, officially its own, the pulpit should retire from the press ; and that an age clamorous from every other quarter, should find the clergy officially silent, on the broad field of society. Nevertheless, the unpopularity of printed sermons in America cannot be denied ; and the American pulpit must be in this dilemma ; either American sermons are not worthy to be read — are not deeply interesting and instructive — contain nothing worthy of review ; or the community which hears living and life-giving dis-

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courses, are as dull thereafter as the walls which heard not ; and they who have claimed a peculiar excellence for the American pulpit, are confuted by American indifference to printed sermons. Let who will decide the alternative. Be it as it may, the true sermon is not, cannot be dull ; no more from the press than the pulpit : no more in the private closet than in the public sanctuary.

The sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth sermons were delivered in substance before the General Association of Massachusetts, at their session at Plymouth, June 27, 1837. In commending, as he ought, this volume to the Clergy, the author cannot do better than to transfer to this preface the passages appropriate to that occasion.

" No subject can be more appropriate to the present occasion, when, from all parts of this Commonwealth, and indeed from all parts of the land, the officers of the Lord's house are met in their annual convocation, to remember their Master, in that special act by which he rent the vail, and opened the holy place, and made his house a house of prayer for all people; when they are met to receive his pledge of aid, and to give their pledge of service, in gathering all people to him, ' who gathereth the outcasts of Israel.' I cannot aim at a higher purpose than to dismiss this assembly of the officers of public worship, with a deeper sense of the importance of the services they have in charge ; with a more studious care to conform those services to the inspired pattern of worship and of doctrine ; less inclined to substitutes of human invention ; more firmly trusting in the chief means of grace ; and more entirely resolved to give utmost scope to the triumphant institution of the last days. . . . Thus would I fulfil in a place and way contrary to all my youthful expectations,

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whatever pledge in behalf of the universal spread of the gospel I made with my companions before this body, at Bradford, June 27, 1810, twenty-nine years ago this day; thus would I make my age true to the principles and purposes of my youth ; and my spared life true to those departed fathers and brethren who have left their unfinished labors on the hands of the living. Give me your prayers, that he who prospered the feeble effort of that day, will aid our present weakness to contribute to the prophetic vision, to the exaltation of the Lord's house, and the flow of all nations unto it

" The officers, too — not with the pride or self-interest of office, but in the meekness and kindness of their Master, must exalt to their due importance the services they have in charge ; must ' know how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God ;' not so servants of all work as to become workmen in the temple that need to be ashamed ; not so working out of season, as to be incapable of due work in season ; not so addicted to extraordinary exertions, as to be either incompetent or disinclined to be ' steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord.' They greatly mistake their behaviour in God's house, who, by services extra official, waste their vigor and capacity for those which are official ; who become listless and incapable of the work which God has appointed, by over-doing in the appointments of man ; or who sacrifice to the excitement and pressure of a score of days, or weeks, or months, their duty in the Lord's house for a score or scores of years ; and who, while they destroy or mar their own entrustment, degrade the divine institution in the minds of men.

"A word here, to prevent mistake as to principles of usefulness. Nothing is more plain than that all men, and, above all, the appointed and pledged officers of the Lord's

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house, owe to their Master their whole time, and talents, and strength. He has no title to the sacred office, who adopts any lower principle. But this, instead of excluding sleep, and rest, and relaxation, and quiet, and regularity, and method, includes them ; instead of including irregularity, inconstancy, over-action, excludes them. The true way to be useful, to be most useful, is to sleep in the hours of sleep — to rest in the season of rest — to regulate life according to the weakness of our nature, according to the method of humanity ; quietly, patiently, and steadfastly to execute, not the effervescence of a moment, but the deliberate and large plans of a devoted and conscientious mind. 'Incessant activity, be it of whatever sort it may, will become bankrupt in the end.' * The idea that ministers, in ' this day,' or in any other day, have a killing amount of business required at their hands — that 'the age' lays on them a crushing burden, must be false. And its greatest evil is, not the dispiriting, or disabling, or destroying the existing race of officers in the Lord's house, but in degrading their office from its station, as a calm, and quiet, and steadfast, and yet mighty power — in fixing the expectation of the people upon quantity, and multiplicity, and novelty of effort, rather than on its essence — in the long collapses which follow spasmodic efforts — in the want of a true and available industry in ministers and churches — and in the general disregard to the method of Heaven — the stopping and breaking up the water-courses from the temple of the living God. It is time for the officers of the Lord's house, not to be idle and indifferent, not to bury one of their talents in the earth; but to think and to judge how they ought to behave in the church of the living God, and then to do what ought to be done, and to shun what

* Gothe.

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ought to be shunned ; lest that which is vain or profane eat as doth a canker

"And now, in conclusion; it is fair to hope, and labor in hope, that a new development may ere-long be made of the powers of public worship, such as is predicted to bring on the long-expected glory of - the last days.' The failure of every substitute in fulfilling its early promise, and in accomplishing excellent and permanent results, may be supposed to have prepared the minds of men for a new and growing welcome of this ancient and divine ordinance. Surely the time must come, when the people will not ask for new, and still newer, and again for new and still newer ways of converting the people, if new and still newer, and again new and still newer disappointments can

teach them wisdom It is fair to hope, that the time

may be at hand, when the new method shall be a new welcome of the old one ; when the people shall say — when many people shall say, one to another, ' Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths;' and that then out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, bringing on the peaceful reign of the Redeemer.

" Our part, as the officers of public worship, as ministers in the Lord's house, is to attend our courses with all fidelity and faith, and with such growing skill as believing and faithful men cannot fail to gain ; doing lohat ought to be done, and shunning what ought to be shunned; endeavoring to exalt this institution to its due supremacy in the minds of men, as worthy to become ' an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations ;' until amidst us, and around us, and over the wide world, ' a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation.'

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"I call upon you, fathers and brethren, with all the earnestness which becomes an officer of the Lord's house among his co-officials, to do your part, not to exalt public worship, as an important institution among others, coordinate and equal ; but as the institution, in which all that are worth possessing, have their subsistence and their power; which, when it shall be exalted to its due supremacy, will be found recovering, and establishing, and invigorating, and perfecting, and extending all other institutions for the benefit of man : — not as an old method, which ages have worn out ; but as vigorous and efficient as it is ancient and venerable ; still fresh in the ' dew of its youth;' still conquering by the rod of its strength; which has proved its power, in all ages, in proportion as it has been welcomed among men ; and which claims, as well from history as prophecy, to be the supreme method of the last days.

" Come, then, fathers and brethren, officers and members of the churches, let us seal our pledge in behalf of this institution, in the blood which opened the House of Prayer for all People ; and from this venerated spot where our fathers worshipped, let us pass the word, far as their sons have spread, and through the world — ' Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; for he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in His paths.' "