be not directly provoked.

We must absolutely decline it

when the attack is only a sarcasm or an abuse.

As far as possible, we must change the discussion into an appeal to conscience and edifying conversation.

It can not be reasonably required of the pastor to engage in formal conflict on the stage of science with professed men of learning who draw their weapons against religion from their special pursuits. A clergy of such a stamp (so M. Vincent* insists) is an impossibility. Men of a particular class should be met by men of a corresponding class. Religion has more than one class of ministers, and more than one kind of proofs.

Infidelity, even with the most ignorant, piques itself on an aggressive character; that is to say, on believing something in opposition to the beliefs which religion proposes. Each has his system, which is often nothing more than a mass of gratuitous and incoherent assertions-a collection of pithy phrases, stolen, without understanding them, from conversations and books. There is no point of doctrine so abstract or subtile that it does not produce itself under some trivial and puerile form in the language of these bold spirits of low degree. Contempt is never seasonable, never useful; but we must not give these ambitious proverbs of ignorant infidelity honor which they do not deserve, and engage in discussions which, though they may have a limit and a result with persons of a cultivated mind, have often neither result nor limit with narrow and ignorant minds. If, nevertheless, it is useful to convince them that they have not so stately a system as they imagine, it is yet more useful, either in the sequel or at the beginning, to transfer them to another stage, namely, that of conscience and experience—to awaken in them the wants which they have proudly put to sleep, and to show them in all their beauty the work and character of God, as revealed by the Gospel, and the privileges of a Christian as attested by a truly Christian life.

*Mélanges de Religion et de Théologie.

IX. We have more to do with rationalism, which accepts the sacred documents, than with infidelity, which discards them. We refer not only to learned rationalism, with which a simple pastor can not always contend as a formal polemic, but to superficial and second-hand rationalism, which seeks to blunt the edge of that evangelical truth by which it is wounded. We venture little in assuming that this rationalism has for its ordinary source a repugnance of heart, and that it is in the rationalist's conscience that the weapons, in contending with him, are to be sought. Without, therefore, omitting arguments of another kind, furnished by science, and without seeming to shrink from the combat, we must make great use of internal evidence, and call conscience to bear witness. Let us not forget how strong the Scripture is, and that it is sufficient in itself: The more we use the Scripture in explaining the Scripture, the more shall we be struck with the excellence of this method. We can not too earnestly remind ministers that the word of God should abound in them, so that, having learned it by heart and by the heart, the principal passages of the sacred books will recur to them easily and promptly whenever they shall be needed. This knowledge should be not of isolated parts, but of parts combined or forming a whole; and the sense of each verse should be presented as penetrated with the sense and the savor of all the principal passages that relate to the same subject. Such a knowledge of the Bible (talis et tanta) can not be too strongly recommended to all ministers of the Gospel (or stewards of the word of God).

X. Out of the pale of Christian belief there are Stoics, more or less religious, whose religion is strictly that of duty, even when they seemingly and sincerely desire to make God the object of duty. This class of men deserves more atten

* We may properly refer here to some works more or less popular on the evidences of Christianity: Cellerier, Bogue, Erskine, Whately, Jennings, Paley, and Chalmers.

STOICS.

269 tion, and should be proposed, if not as a model, at least as an instructive example, to those Christians who have, perhaps, too easily and too quickly received grace before they had well felt all the weight of the law. These Stoics are in a great error, in which they keep themselves by regarding too constantly the abuse which is made of Christian liberty. But if the first service we should render to them is to show them, by our example, that Christian morality is not lax, this service is not the only one. We must explain to them, as we have opportunity, the infinite character of Christian morality, the awful disproportion between the law regarded in the Christian point of view, which is eternal principle, and the capacity of man. We must, finally, give them to taste, in the midst of their hard labor, the solace which is to be found in love, which alone can impart the joy of fulfilling the law, and which is only diffused through the heart by the spirit of Jesus Christ, and by the assurance of having been the object of his love. It is manifest that I do not confound these Stoics, these zealots of duty, with those vulgar moralists who submit themselves not to the, but to their morality, and who only accept the law when they have brought it to the measure of their carnal and worldly interests.

Two Duties of a Pastor toward the Members of his Flock considered as Sinners, and subject to the Precepts of the Moral Law: Reprehension and Direction.

Reprehension is a duty of the pastor. It is involved in every spontaneous performance of duty in the care of souls : It is, moreover, imposed upon pastors in the Gospel. Reprehension is difficult at all times and with all persons; it is yet more difficult in the actual state of our flocks. To be sensible of this, we need only compare this state with that of the primitive Church, or any other in which its essential characteristics are reproduced. This duty, in a homogeneous and closely united community, approaches to that of paternal cor

rection, and may have respect either to tendencies or to negative facts. In almost all associations for worship of the present day, it would be a real inquisition if it should go beyond notorious public facts; and it would be so, in every case, if it extended beyond positive facts.

Absolute non-attendance on public worship is a negative fact: May we call those to account who are to be reproached with it? How and under what authority may we approach them? Do we owe them a duty, or do we not?

A man who is not of our parish, in the sense in which all his acts witness that he is out of the pale of the Church, has no claim on our reprehension, and the discipline of this soul does not properly enter into our pastoral obligations, if we only have respect to our official or conventional position. But if the pastor be also a missionary in spirit, or if, apart from the pastor, there is no missionary, who will dispute his right to show compassion, and even to extend aid, beyond the sphere of his pastoral obligations? Sin is a misfortune-a crime is a disaster: Would it be less natural to go to the assistance of a man thus grievously afflicted than of one whose house has been destroyed by an incendiary?

Charity and humility, these two inseparable virtues—inseparable because essential to one another, give to reprehension, appropriateness, proportion, true force.*

St. Paul (1 Tim., v., 1–5) has said, or, at least, intimated every thing essential to reprehension as adapted to different ages and sexes: By analogy we may discern how it should be modified by other distinctions.

Constituted as our churches are, it is very evident that public reprehension can have no place in them; and it is doubtful whether, even under any form of ecclesiastical gov ernment,† it would be expedient or proper.

* "Il ne faut pas casser les vitres,

Mais il faut bien les nettoyer."

-See BENGEL, Pensées, 27.

+ See part iv., chap. i., Discipline.

Direction.-If we are called to give a soul judicious advice, or to direct it in its way, without departing from or contradicting the principles of Protestant Christianity:

Let us beware of parceling out morality-always referring particular rules to general principles: Let us preserve the mean between that ultra-methodic spirit which would regulate every thing beforehand, and tends gradually to legal bondage and self-righteous pride, and that vague spirituality which feeds on feeling, and will hear nothing either of caution or means. Let us not repel the idea of an art or method of living well, but let us not make it too minute or prescribe the same method to all. Bossuet has said that "love knows no order, and can not adjust itself to method; that confusion is its order; that distraction can not come from that source." But I see nothing inconsistent with love in the care with which one seeks the best means of showing his love to the Lord (Eph., v., 10), and the best means of cherishing that love. Our weakness obliges us to observe order, and does not allow in us an absolute contempt of method. In our directions, we ought not to restrict ourselves either to the internal life or the external life.

We must have regard to the principle of liberty and responsibility, and avoid taking the place of conscience in any one; for there will not be wanting those who would resign theirs into our hands.

If, to refer to a different matter, men must not be borne on shoulders so as to deprive them of the use of their limbs and their locomotive inclination, no more should we exact too much from them in a short time. To condense these two rules into two words, let us not direct too much, nor urge too much. We must teach men to wait, but, at the same time, to be active; not to make those who are confided to our care impatient or despondent, but rather to be constantly assisting them.

We must not encourage—on the contrary, we must repress