Volume 7. Number 8. March 1, 1830, pp. 632-637.

• Sermons to Young Preachers.--No. III. by Alexander Campbell, pp. 632-633.
• Essays on Man in His Primitive State, and under the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian Dispensations.--No. XII.: Jewish Age.--No. IV. by Alexander Campbell, pp. 633-634.
• To the Editor of the Christian Baptist by Thomas, pp. 634-635.
• Reply to Thomas by Alexander Campbell, pp. 635-636.
• Bishop Semple by Alexander Campbell, p. 636.
• New Periodicals by Alexander Campbell, pp. 636-637.

      YOUNG preachers are not always young men. I once heard a man say, that, though an old man, he was a young preacher. This was certainly true for he had been converted, he said, but very recently; and it required no great penetration to see that he had not even learned how ignorant of the scriptures he was, and how incompatible it was for him to presume to teach what he could scarcely read. Yet this man produced more noise, or, as some would call it, more effect, than the most experienced and erudite Doctor could have done. The people were so accustomed to such warm-hearted and divinely inspired proclaimers, they thought even his blunders were graces of the Holy Spirit, and his flights of unmeaning declamation were the inspirations of Infinite Wisdom. Whenever a person is considered as a legate of the skies, he has gained the day. Whenever a preacher appears before a congregation as one specially called by God and sent, he has but little trouble in gaining the implicit audience of the people. How dare they reject the message of God, and what need have they to examine the truth of one acting under the commission of the Omniscient? Would God send a liar, a deceiver, one unacquainted with his will, one unaccomplished for the task? No, most assuredly. He never did, he never will, call, commission, and send one incompetent agent. And therefore all his proclaimers had an authority which it was impious to oppose. But mind, they could all prove their mission not by words, assertions, or protestations, but by works as supernatural as their doctrine.

      Neither young nor old proclaimers can, with either reason or scripture to sustain them, make such pretensions now. If then, we would appear credible, or worthy of the audience of the people, we must appear before them, not under the assumption or pretension of ambassadors from heaven, or as God's special ministers; but as the pious, and humble and devout students of the Bible; as persons who have believed the gospel ourselves, and upon such grounds and reasons as will not make us ashamed to give a reason of the hope which we entertain.

      No disciple, old or young, can, with any consistency of character, refuse to tell the reasons why he believes in, and loves the Lord Jesus. But all who either tell or proclaim in a pulpit, or on a chair, their own convictions and feelings, doubts, fears, and hopes, preach themselves or their feelings, instead of Jesus Christ. I presume a pious Mussulman could narrate his feelings, doubts, extacies, and joys in "the Prophet Mahomet." But he who could expect to convert others to any faith by such a course, calculates very largely upon the ignorance and weakness of his audience.

      All evidences are addressed to the higher and more noble faculties of man. The understanding, and not the passions, is addressed; and therefore an appeal to the latter, before the former is enlightened, is as unphilosophic as it is unscriptural. As the helm guides the ship, and the bridle the horse, so reason is the governing principle in man. Now in preaching Jesus, arguments are to be used--and these are found in the testimony of God. To declare that testimony, and to adduce the evidences which support it, is to proclaim the gospel. To perceive that testimony and to feel its force, is therefore the first and the indispensable qualification for a proclaimer of the gospel--to be able to discover it to others, to hold it up to the eye of the mind, and to recommend it in its fulness and force, is the second.

      To make a sermon, and to proclaim the gospel, are two things which are as different as logic and gospel. To make a sermon is the art of logic applied to any theme, whether law, medicine, or general science. To write or speak a sermon, is an art which requires much study, a general education, or else an extraordinary genius and much reading. The theme for a sermon may be any topic in any science or art in the whole circle. "And Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his ass" is a text, or theme, on which a very logical sermon may be spoken. "Remember Lot's wife" is another suitable theme; so is "God is a Spirit." Each of the proverbs of Solomon, each period in the Bible, each sentence in any book, may be a text on which, by the art [632] of logic, a man may build a sermon. One theme may be more instructive than another, more pleasing and more suitable to the genius or taste of the speaker and his audience; but by the art of logic a grammarian and logician may make a good sermon on any topic. Statesmen make speeches, and Divines make sermons; but there is no difference in the art, and often very little difference in the theme. To make a sermon, and to make a speech, is just one and the same thing; the difference is in the topic on which the sermon or the speech is made. I have heard Lawyers make as good sermons as Divines; and Divines make as good speeches as Lawyers. Sometimes "Ministers" read their sermons; and we had one Judge in the Virginia Convention who read his speeches. The word sermon is the Roman name of a speech; and the word speech is the English name of a sermon. There is one difference. The tone of voice which a lawyer, or a statesman, or a literary lecturer uses, is not generally the same tone which a Divine uses. There is the sacred and the common tone. The same ideas communicated by a Lawyer and a "Minister" differ not only in the place where they are spoken, the pulpit and the bar; but in the tones, semitones, and the gestures which accompany them. The Preacher supposes that, as his subject is sacred he ought to have a sacred tone; and the Lawyer who knows his theme is common, conceives that a common tone will be suitable enough.

      To make a sermon is as much the work of art as to make a speech at the bar, or in the forum. No man can make a good one without much study, training, and general reading. Hence Colleges and Theological Schools are necessary, to make sermonizers. Men may talk, declaim, or exhort in public, without much art, or logic, or learning; but to make a good sermon on religion or politics, on physics or metaphysics, requires much learning and many years training. The course of education is too limited and the term of attendance on schools and colleges is too short, especially in these United States, to make many good sermonizers. Men of extraordinary genius in some six or seven years, may make a neat, logical, chaste, and classical oration. But in general, and for ordinary minds, it requires ten of the best years of a man's life, from fourteen to twenty-four, or say from infancy to twenty-one. But it must be noted that a sermon may be logical, ingenious, forcible, and classically correct, and yet not eloquent; and it may be eloquent without much logic, grammar, or science. Logan was always eloquent--Dugald Stuart never. The latter was too profound a scholar, too acute a metaphysician, too great a critic to be eloquent; the former had the feelings of a man and the imagination of a poet, without the fetters of philosophy.

      A man, to be truly eloquent, must follow natural feeling, and must be born with an imagination, with a fancy, and with an ardor of feeling which never can be acquired, but which may be repressed at school.

      But a sermon-maker, without education, and without much training, is, to persons of discernment, one of the most disgusting performers, and one of the most useless speakers we can imagine. Hence of all drones, political, economical, or ecclesiastical, I know of none more deserving of neglect, and I know of none more likely to obtain it, than those drivelling, prosing, and illiterate sermonizers. But to make sermons is a business, a trade, or calling by itself. To proclaim or preach Jesus, is a work of another kind. Of this in my next.

EDITOR.      

      THE Jewish religion as instituted by Moses, as recorded by Moses in the five books, has not a single promise, nor a single curse, which looks beyond time. Whatever previous or subsequent revelations may have taught--whatever the Patriarchs before Moses, or the Prophets after him, may have taught, one thing to me, at least, is certain--that Moses, in originating or instituting the Jews' religion, taught nothing concerning a future state--not a word concerning eternal salvation, or future and eternal punishment in the Jewish religion. This being a truth not to be resisted, (and if it can, direct me to the chapter and verse) I say, this being granted, then it must follow that the design of the Jewish religion and the design of the Christian are not the same. The former looked exclusively to this present world; the latter primarily, and almost exclusively, looks to the next.

      Long life, health, and abundance of corn, wine, and oil--rivers of milk and honey, were the blessings which it promised; and to the disobedient, wasting and famine, and bitter destruction in their persons, families, flocks, herds, and property, were the curses which it proposed. A happy nation, enjoying abundance of all earthly good; victorious and triumphant in war, and secure under the auspices of the Almighty from all foreign invasion, was the tendency and the consummation of that peculiar constitution under which Israel lived. "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy dwellings, O Israel!" The moral effect and meaning, and unquestionably the great design of this peculiar institution, is very appositely expressed in the following lines;

      While they kept the law, or lived agreeably to their institution, they exhibited to all the world the peculiar happiness of living under the institutions and protection of the Almighty. And when they transgressed the law, or departed from the divine institutions, the visitations of Heaven, the judgments and calamities which befel them, taught the world the awful consequences of departing from the living God.

      By the oracles deposited in their sanctuary, by the institutions of their religion, by their prosperity and security when obedient, and by the calamities which befel them as individuals, families, and as a nation when disobedient, the knowledge of the one only living and true God was preserved in the world--his mercy and his justice--his goodness and his truth were rendered most conspicuous.

      They read these records and consider the history of this people--they study this institution and examine this religion with very little profit, who do not view it thus. To think that the law of Moses, or the institution from Mount Sinai--to think that the whole or any part of this economy had for its object the eternal salvation of the people under it, is not only to think without reason and contrary to authority, but it is to confound the whole oracles of God, and to make christianity a mere continuation of the principle of law amended and improved.

      There were saints before Moses, cotemporary [633] with Moses, and after Moses, in the other nations, under the constitution given to Noah and his descendants after the flood. Salvation was accessible to the nations who held fast the traditions derived from the family of Noah, as it was to the Jews, who most exactly complied with all the national institutions. As reasonably might we conclude that all who fell in the wilderness through unbelief of God's promise concerning Canaan, or for any of the misdemeanors of which they were guilty, including both Moses and Aaron, are not to partake in the resurrection of the just, never to enter the New and Heavenly Jerusalem, as to think that all of them who were without the commonwealth of Israel and not included in the covenant with Abraham and with Israel, were forever cut off from the everlasting kingdom of glory.

      Melchisedec was as illustrious a saint as ever Aaron was, and of a much more illustrious office. The children of Edom and of the surrounding nations long retained the knowledge of God among them, and even down to the days of John the Harbinger, there were men of other nations who feared the God of heaven, many besides the eastern magi who looked for the coming of the Just One.

      Submission to the institution of Moses was not "essential," as some would have it, to the salvation of the world, neither was circumcision the door of salvation to the human race. But this only by the way.

      We are warranted in saying that the enjoyment of eternal salvation was not derived to the Jews from any thing in their religion but what was prospective in it; and that it was not instituted for that purpose. There was a righteousness of law inseparably connected under that economy with the greatest temporal felicity; and there was a want of the righteousness of works which superinduced the greatest earthly calamities. But now "a righteousness without law has been manifested, attested by the law and the prophets"--a righteousness upon a new principle, and tending to another inheritance. Under the old constitution, though a man might be blameless, still he could not relish nor enjoy the blessings of the life promised under the new institution, unless born again, unless possessed of a righteousness not revealed but only attested by the law and the prophets. Yes, he might enjoy the life promised in the old constitution, and he might possess the righteousness required by the law, as Paul boasted he once did; but except born of water and of the Spirit--unless he saw, discerned, and relished the kingdom of heaven and the righteousness and life thereof, into that kingdom he could not enter. Had Moses himself lived in the time of Nicodemus, and had they both come to the Messiah at one and the same time, he would have told them both what he told this ruler of the Jews. To Moses the lawgiver, he would have said, 'Moses, unless you are born again, you cannot discern the kingdom of God--and unless you are born of water and of Spirit, you cannot enter into it.'

      The life promised in the law and the righteousness required under the law, were just as dissimilar to the life promised by Jesus, and the righteousness now revealed, as the flesh is to the Spirit, or a kingdom of this world is to the kingdom of glory. "The life and immortality" of the gospel were no part of the Jewish economy; and neither of them was developed in that economy. Jesus brought life and immortality to light; and what was contained or portrayed in the symbols has been manifested to us, and realized by us. "The law made no one perfect." It only superinduced "a better hope by which we draw near to God."

      To contemplate the Jewish constitution and kingdom in this light, in the light which Paul throws upon it in his letter to the Hebrews, will do much to unveil Moses, and to present the unveiled face of Jesus to the eyes of his disciples, will do very much to save us from the influence of ancient and modern judaizers, from those teachers who are always "desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding not what they say, nor whereof they affirm;" who are compounding Jewish and Christian institutions, and endeavoring to place men under the law as a rule of life to guide them to heaven, which was only designed to guide men in the pursuit and enjoyment of a rational and felicitous life upon earth. The Jews had the egg whence came life to the nations; but now since the life has come, they have but the shell. In their symbols the gospel was contained; but now that the Messiah has come and brought life and immortality to light, there is to us Gentiles in the law of Moses neither promise of the life that now is nor of that which is to come. As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. But Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes on him.

EDITOR.      

      DEAR BROTHER CAMPBELL: Being born of very humble parentage, I was compelled, from circumstances over which I had no control, to live for the first twenty years of my life, in some measure secluded from the social circle; and up to this time I have not been able to overcome the habits thus acquired in my early life, from which cause I have been deprived of much of the information which might have been received from you in the social and private circle during your stay in this city; and hence, know but little of your views and feelings, except what has been derived from your writings and public discourses. But the pleasure and the profit, derived from these sources will never, I am certain, this side the grave he fully expressed. I must be permitted to say, however, that I have received more instruction and satisfaction, on religious subjects from these sources, than from all others, the Bible only excepted.

      But not to weary you with an unprofitable introduction to the main object of this letter, let me proceed to state that a part of your discourse on the 15th ch. of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians was not so clear to my mind as I could wish. I think I heard you say that "there was not a single individual in the church of Corinth who did not verily believe that Jesus was raised from the dead--that this was an axiomatic truth, admitted by them all," or words to that effect.

      Now, you know that "these books were designed to be read and understood by persons of the humblest capacity, as well as by those of the most exalted genius; readers of the most limited education, as well as those of the most liberal attainments, were equally embraced in the views of the writers. If particular attention was paid to any class of readers, it was doubtless to the poor who have not the means of a refined education." New Version, page 11. Now, being such a one myself, and feeling that I had a right to read and understand for myself as well as I can, let me proceed to say that I had taken a different view of the subject in that portion of the good book referred to above, from the one given by yourself. Without consulting any human teacher [634] whatever. I had taken up the idea that there were some persons in the church who actually denied the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The reasons why I thus concluded are--1st. He lays before them the evidence, or the proof of the fact that he was risen. If they all believe it, why prove it? Surely this was unnecessary. But, 2d. He asks, "how say some among you, that there is no resurrection?" and adds, "for if there be no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised." From which I had concluded that there were persons "among" the brethren (but not therefore brethren) who had adopted the Sadducean sentiment that there was "no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit," which sentiment, having a paralyzing influence, and being opposed to fact, (the fact on which christianity hangs) the Apostle here meets and destroys, by showing, first, that Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and thus at once refutes the sentiment that there was no resurrection; and 2d, that Christ was raised as the first fruits, and a certain pledge that "those that sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him."

      Now, with this one exception, I fully concurred with you in your remarks on that chapter, and I shall continue to rejoice that I was permitted to hear you on that occasion; and as truth is my object, I have no doubt but you will feel pleasure in putting me right if I have a mistaken view of the subject, or misunderstood you on that occasion.

      But before I lay aside the pen I will take this opportunity and the liberty to express the pleasure which I felt in reading, among other things, the "Sermons to Young Preachers," and the hope that you will follow up the subject until your readers are well informed as to their duty on that subject. And may I here be permitted to make an inquiry predicated upon the circumstances by which I am surrounded. Some years ago, when my soul was liberated from the bondage of sin and fear of death, I was so enamoured with the glories of Jesus and his cause, that I wished all persons to partake with me the joys of salvation; and I felt it my duty and privilege to say "come" but did not believe that the terms' preacher, teacher, minister, &c. ought to be applied to me, and hence thought that I was a nondescript in religion. The textuary system was tried, but the Christian Baptist came to hand and soon exploded that; and your own teachings in person have convinced me that I knew so little about the scriptures, that I am almost ready to sit down and never again say in public, "God now commands all men every where to reform."

      Now, my inquiry is this, What shall I do in this matter? If I know myself, I love the truth so dearly, that I contemplate with horror the idea of erring and thereby teaching others to err; and at the same time it is written, "Let every one according as he has received a spiritual gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold favor of God. If any one speak, let him speak as the oracles of God require." Sacred writings, page 432. To this last item I do most cheerfully subscribe, and am willing to do all I can to induce others to do likewise. On this subject, also, let me hear from you; and believe me to be, in the mean time, your unworthy but affectionate brother, in the hope of a glorious resurrection and blessed immortality.

THOMAS.      

      DEAR BROTHER--That Jesus rose from the dead, was not denied by any member of the church in Corinth. The Sadducean part of that congregation either denied or doubted the literal resurrection of the bodies of the saints. "Some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead:" and you ask, "Suppose there were a resurrection of the dead, with what sort of a body will they come to life again?" These are the two questions which called forth this admirable section of the first letter to the Corinthians; an analysis of which I shall one day, if the Lord permit, present in the Millennial Harbinger. The Sadducean hypothesis had not been fully abandoned by some of this sect converted to the christian faith. After the renunciation of their former schemes and conversion to the Lord, it seems true in their example, as in that of many others, that old associations of ideas and old prejudices got for a time the ascendancy over their new faith, and their former philosophic doubts returned with all their perplexing influences:--"How shall the dead be raised? and (if raised) with what body do they come?"

      At present suffice it to say, that Paul reminds them of their convictions when he came to Corinth; declares what he proclaimed; enumerates the facts alleged; asserts their cordial reception of these facts, and assures them of complete and eternal salvation if they retained these facts in their memories. He hastens to the resurrection of Jesus, repeats the evidences he had submitted to them, and from the certainty and assurance with which they had received and accredited the fact of Christ's resurrection, he reduces to an absurdity their doubts concerning the resurrection of the saints.

      "So we proclaimed and so you believed," said he, when he had repeated what he formerly had announced. Now mark the consequences which will result from your denial of the resurrection of the just;--

      1. You will deny your own faith; for if there be no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised!--contrary to your own belief!

      2. Again, if there be no resurrection of the dead, false is our proclamation, and your faith in it is also false. Not false was your faith, but false is your faith in our proclamation!

      3. Besides, we have not only proclaimed what is false in itself, but we are false witnesses as respects God; for we have declared against God that he did, what, on this hypothesis, he never did--raise up Jesus from the dead. And recollect the corollary is, if the dead rise not, Christ has not been raised.

      4. Farther, if Christ be not raised, your faith in him would be useless. Your sins have not been washed away.

      5. In the fifth place, all the martyrs, all who have died on account of their testifying the resurrection of Jesus, have perished--have thrown their lives away for nothing, and are gone forever.

      6. And we, too, who have not yet died, but are in jeopardy of our lives every day in making this proclamation, are leading the most miserable lives for no purpose but for deceiving and seducing men, in proclaiming and attesting the resurrection of Jesus and of the dead. These and other absurd consequences must result from your questioning the resurrection of the dead.

      You will then, my brother, perceive that Paul reasons from the fact of Christ's resurrection as from an axiom, a first principle, which no one in the congregation of Corinth for a moment questioned. So clear was their perception, and so deep was their conviction of this truth, that Paul [635] does no more than remind them of it, and of the evidences on which it rested, and argues from it as from some self-evident principle.

      The next item in your letter will be attended to in my fourth sermon to young preachers. The third you will find in this number. The desire which you feel is the most natural and the most commendable in the world--for if the heavenly messengers in the presence of God rejoice more over one reforming sinner than over ninety and nine just persons who need no reformation, who are running the christian race in the prescribed course; if a father rejoices more over one returning prodigal than over all his sons and daughters which are virtuously walking in his commandments--surely we cannot but feel most solicitous to be the means, the humble instruments, of turning sinners from the error of their way, and of saving men from death. It is, therefore, the most natural desire in the heart of every christian to be instrumental in bringing others into the fold of God, and in making them happy under the peaceful and benign reign of the Prince of Peace. To see men professing godliness, and remiss in their activities, and cold in their zeal for the conversion of sinners, is one of the greatest incongruities which I can conceive, and one of the most unequivocal symptoms of a form of godliness without the power. "I would you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue you out of my mouth."

      In all christian affection, and in the kingdom of Jesus,

	Yours,
	EDITOR.

      I HAD the pleasure of an interview with the venerable Bishop Semple, on my way from Richmond, as well as with most of my former acquaintance, friends and brethren, in the counties of Louisa, Hanover, King William, King and Queen, Essex, Caroline, and Spottsylvania. My interview with none of the Bishops was so interesting as that with Bishop Semple. From the collision into which we had fallen through Dr. Noel's instrumentality, and from the notoriety of the differences existing, as detailed in the preceding volumes of this work, our meeting derived additional interest.--While I was lecturing in Upper Essex meeting-house, the Bishop arrived nearly two hours before I had finished my address. After an interchange of the most friendly salutations, we repaired together to enjoy the christian hospitalities of our common friend and brother Bishop Henley. Many guests accompanied us, and we had quite a little congregation around the social, and I might add, the christian fireside.

      After the Bishop and myself had felt the cheering influences of the fire, and the inspiring influences of our mutual friends and acquaintance, we got into a four hours' very agreeable fireside discussion of many matters and things pertaining to the christian institution. Not a word was said, nor an allusion made to what had formerly transpired between us, or was written in this work. All was as though it had never been. And after comparing the grounds and reasons of our respective views and courses in the christian profession, and after we had united in prayer and praise, we reposed together upon the same couch, until the eyelids of the morning opened upon us, and bade us look to Heaven. We arose. And after we had dressed, and the family and guests had assembled, we repaired to a pond, on which the ice was about an inch thick, not more than one fourth of a mile from the house; and there, while the sun was lifting his golden locks over the tops of the trees and the little congregation standing round the pool, I immersed a disciple from King William into the christian faith, as they were wont to do before Antichrist was born! We returned to the house, united in worship, breakfasted; and after some friendly conversation, we prepared to depart, each one his own way. Bishop Semple and I, after expressing for each other our mutual good wishes, bade each other adieu, he proceeding to King and Queen, and I to Caroline.

      It would be unbecoming for me, and it is a task for which I was never well qualified, to give any account of the topics, arguments, and discussions which filled up the hours we were together. There were a goodly number of very intelligent brethren and sisters present who could do this much better than I. What I admired most of all was the good temper and christian courtesy of this venerable disciple, who, although unable to rise above all his early associations and the long received opinions which a long course of reading and teaching had riveted upon his mind, yet he did not lose sight of the meekness and mildness, the candor and complaisance which the religion of Jesus teaches, and without which, though a man's head were as clear as an angel's intellect, his religion is vain.

      There is certainly a very great advance in the knowledge of the christian scriptures in most of those counties within the last five years. I was not a little surprized to mark the vast progress of some elderly persons who had been stationary, as they now say, for many years before. The liberality and inquisitiveness which now are manifest every where, indicate that nothing can stand which is not founded upon the oracles of God. A few years more will wither up the systems of human device, and dry up the fountains of error which so long have afflicted the church with barrenness, and which have reduced christianity to a lifeless skeleton, alike impotent to reform the world and to console those who have sought for happiness in the kingdom of Jesus.

EDITOR.      

      THIS country is likely to become one of the most intelligent in the world. The increase of readers, writers, and periodicals, is astonishing. When this work was about one year old, or, perhaps, before it was a year old, a Presbyterian paper published that itself was the only religious paper in seven states and three territories. In Kentucky alone there are the Christian Messenger, the Baptist Recorder, the Christian Examiner, the Baptist Chronicle, the Western Luminary, and the Paidobaptist, said to be defunct, but to be succeeded by the Presbyterian Advocate. How many more I know not. There is no doubt but they will all do good. The Paidobaptist, I have understood, though intending to build up "babyism" in the form of sprinkling infant faces--a rite the most unmeaning in all the world, Jewish, Christian, or Pagan, has helped in some instances to pull it down. The person who was to have published it, then a Presbyterian, after the appearance of the first number was himself inclined to renounce paidobaptism as they call it--did renounce it--was immersed, and is now the editor of the Christian Examiner. The "Paidobaptist" did certainly expose the weakness of the cause it plead, the most ably of any print in the backwoods--so [636] much so that one year seems to have been enough for it. The Baptist Recorder, I learn, though I have seen but one number of it in six months, holds on the even tenor of its way. It, now and then, I hear, from those who read it, gives me "a mortal wound." But I have been so often "mortally wounded" that I cannot die except by my own hands. Whether it was too weak or too strong for the zeal of my opponents, I know not; but they have got up the Baptist Chronicle. This goes hand in hand with the Western Luminary in advocating creeds and councils of human mechanism, and in publishing such calumnies against me as that from the pen of Randolph Stone, noticed in the first number of the Millennial Harbinger. The Baptist Chronicle will not fail for ingenuity and tact, as the Editor, Uriel Chambers, Esq. is both a Baptist, a lawyer, and a christian--one, however, of the Georgetown school. He wrote me a long letter which I have heard he has published in the Baptist Recorder; but I never saw it in print, and I have little recollection of its contents, for I read it in great haste immediately before my departure for Richmond, and resolved to publish it on my return; but he would not wait for that, and gave it himself. I have an answer to it on file, sent me from the West, containing an exposition of facts and documents, and reasonings, which would nearly fill half of this number.--I cannot think of bestowing so much importance upon such a trifle, as to publish either of them, unless it should become necessary from some cause I yet cannot see. One thing I will say, that, if published, it will not be very savory to my friend Mr. Chambers; and I do not like to publish what would appear a retaliatory act upon him, unless other causes call it forth. I have already exposed so many tricks of my restive opponents, that it seems a work of supererogation--like throwing water on a drowned mouse; to be killing a third time those who are twice dead.

      The "Church Advocate," edited in Vincennes, by elder Daniel Parker, author of the two seeds, or modernized Manichean doctrine of two principles changed from the Persian to the American philosophy, is engaged in slandering me with his usual dexterity in the good work of defamation. He boasts of great intimacy with Dr. Noel, and says he found a cordial welcome into his pulpit in Frankfort. This pulpit, it is said, is consecrated after the manner of the sanctum sanctorum of the Jews.

      I did not till lately know that such was the fact, if it be, and that any church in Kentucky had refused to let any one into their house, who affirmed that the scriptures of the apostles were a perfect rule of life, intelligible, suitable, and able to furnish every one who loved them to every good word and work. No, I did not believe, and like Thomas, I cannot believe upon almost any testimony, that Dr. Noel, or any church of which he is a member, will, by a solemn resolution, declare that any one of good moral and religious character who teaches that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is the Son of God, and that he died for our sins, was buried, and rose again, ascended into heaven, and is the Judge of all men, and who teaches that the scriptures are a divine revelation, clear, intelligible, and perfect; even should he oppose the Doctor's own creed book, would be refused to speak in any house, public or private, which might be convenient. Rumors to this effect, it is true, I have heard some time ago; but that such a step has actually been taken, I want stronger proof than is now before my mind to believe. I cannot reconcile this to all I know of the Doctor, nor of the intelligence of Frankfort.

      Mr. Parker resolves every thing into his philosophic scheme of predestination, and he that denies his work of the Holy Spirit, or his call to the ministry, he represents in his last number as having committed the unpardonable sin. Reader, brace your nerves, and read what follows from his fourth number!

      "If so be, that denying the office and work of the Spirit in experimental religion, and call to, and work of the ministry, should be that sin against the Holy Ghost, (which appears to me to be the fact,) then with awful sensation of feelings, we know the fate of those who are thus engaged. We need not pray for them; the Lord will not hear on their behalf; their doom is filled, and their conscience seared. You cannot bring conviction to their minds--and to say that we do not deny the office or work of the Spirit, and yet contend that the Spirit and Word are one, or that there is no spirit but what is in the Word, is making the matter worse. It is not only denying the work of God, as a Spirit, but also lying before God, for the purpose of covering a blasphemous sin."

      Surely this is a wonderful age, an eventful time! We may expect to hear soon that the Earth is as flat as a trencher, and that the Sun is a ball of fire whirling round it; that language has any meaning, or that Revelation is any blessing to man, may soon be denied. Every one who opposes the dreams of Daniel Parker about his call to the ministry, is not to be prayed for!!! This is the fair meaning of the text and context.

EDITOR.      

[TCB 632-637]