THE

BIBLICAL REPOSITORY

AND

CLASSICAL REVIEW.

THIRD SERIES, NO. VIII.—WHOLE NUMBER LXIV.

OCTOBER, 1846.

ARTICLE I.

THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO PREACHING.

By Rev. ALBERT BARNES, Philadelphia.

WITH reference to its practical influence and value, theology may be contemplated from many points of view. We may approach the Bible under the guidance of the ordinary laws of interpreting language, and inquire what theology is as contemplated there, without reference to its observed adaptation to human nature, and to its effects in the world. We may approach it, as viewed in its effects on mankind, and ask what has been its influence, how it has been modified in the changes occurring in philosophy and in society, or how it has originated or modified those changes. We may approach it by directing our inquiries primarily into the nature of man, and prosecuting the inquiry through that medium, making mental philosophy the basis, and asking what it does to develope the powers of our nature, and to elevate us in the scale of being. Or, we may contemplate it from the pulpit, and ask ourselves what is the theology which experience has shown to be best adapted to the ends of preaching, and which

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In the first case we

we can preach with a hope of success. look at it indeed speculatively and abstractly, yet with certainty as to truth, if we study the Bible with a right spirit; in the second, we learn from its effects on the world what may be presumed to have been the theology which God did or did not intend to teach; in the third, we judge that certain forms of theology which have always come in conflict with the laws of the mind, and the principles of just philosophy, cannot be the theology which the author of the human soul designed to reveal; and in the fourth, we place ourselves in the pulpit, and look around on society, and ask what may be preached so as to answer the ends of preaching-so that men will perceive it to be true, and so that they will be converted to God.

This is the point of view from which I propose now to contemplate theology. I wish to make the pulpit a point of observation from which to look out on the world that we may obtain some lessons which may be of value to those who expect to occupy that position through life.

A natural arrangement of the thoughts which we wish to suggest will be to consider the kinds of theology which cannot be preached, and then that which can be; or to show that there are certain kinds of theology which are not adapted to the pulpit, and then what kind of theology may be preached with success.

Under the first of these heads, we notice three kinds of theology which have prevailed, and which to a great extent still prevail in the world. These are briefly the following: that which, whatever beauty of sentiment or philosophy it may have, does not furnish the proper themes for the eloquence of the pulpit; that which contemplates the propagation of religion mainly by other means than preaching; and that which men are constrained to abandon in preaching.

Of the first of these kinds of theology, it may be observed, that, however it may seem to answer some of the ends of religion, it is not fitted to inspire the eloquence which we naturally expect in the pulpit, and when it is incorporated into a system designed to be preached, it lacks the highest elements

of oratory which theology in its best sense contains. We refer to that form of religion which repels what are regarded as the darker and sterner features of Christianity as it has been usually received in the world. This theology is founded on the beautiful and grand in the works of nature, or in the scenes of redemption. It finds pleasure in the contemplation of the starry heavens; of hills, and streams, and lakes, of the landscape and of the ocean; and is willing in these things to admire and praise the existence and perfections of the Creator. In the contemplation of these things, there is no reluctance to admit the existence of a God, or to dwell on his natural perfections; for in the placid beauty of a landscape, in the silvery murmuring of a rivulet, and in the opening of a rose-bud, no attribute of the Deity is revealed on which the mind even of the gay and the wicked, is unwilling to dwell. This religion is found in all the departments of poetry, and in all the conceptions of mythology. It abounded most among the Greeks, a people who carried the love of the beautiful to a higher eminence than any other, and who embodied it in their unequalled works of art. Over each of the works of nature; over every element, and every event; over every tree, and flower, and breeze, and waving harvest-field, and fountain, they supposed a divinity to preside; and all the skill of the chisel, and the harmony of numbers, were employed to embody and perpetuate their conceptions.

This is still the theology of poetry and romance; and over a large portion of the world, claiming particularly to be ranked among the refined and the intellectual, it yet maintains its dominion. The names, indeed, which were used by that refined and elegant people with so much propriety to express their conceptions, are employed no more. Statues of breathing marble no longer embody their conceptions, but the ideas of virtue and of man, of the influence of religion on the character, and of the prospects which it opens in the future world, differ little from theirs. The heaven to which they look, differs little from the Elysian fields. That which is needful to prepare for that world, differs little from the virtues which a re

fined Athenian deemed necessary to fit him for the world of beauty and of joy to which he looked forward.

This theology, of course, admits the existence of one God as the Creator and moral Governor of the universe, and dwells with rapture on what are regarded as the amiable and lovely traits of his character. It receives, under the Christian form, the great Messenger whom he has sent, as a moral teacher, and ascribes to him, in all respects, an unsurpassed, and in most respects, an unequalled perfection. It admits his authority to give laws, and to suggest the principles of morals. It receives the Bible as containing a revelation, and finds in that much to admire; for, whatever may be its other characteristics, there is no book which contains so much to commend itself to a religionist of this kind as the Bible. So far as man is concerned, this system regards him as indeed in a less desirable condition respecting religion and morals, than he may once have been, and as having some strong propensities to evil; but he is regarded as in such a state that what is needful for him is not a radical and total change, but the development of internal virtues still living within him; the cultivation of his noble and godlike powers. What this theology proposes to do is not to effect an entire transformation, securing the very beginning of goodness in the soul, but to cultivate the virtues already existing there, which need only to be unfolded.

This theology is not without its use in the world, and produces some effects on society. It finds its appropriate home in poetry; in moral essays; in the slight infusion of religion which a refined literature demands; in the deference to religion which the urbane and well-educated find it convenient to show; and in the obvious necessity for keeping up some kind of worship in the world.

But it is little adapted to preaching. It is not the kind of theology which men instinctively feel to be proper for the pulpit. It may have, indeed, all the elegance of language, and beauty of thought, and grace of scholarship, which the pulpit demands and in these respects may furnish models

which men embracing and preaching a more correct theology would do well to copy-but it lacks the elements of power which we expect in the pulpit; it lacks the variety and depth and sublimity furnished to preachers by a different kind of religion. The Greeks never attempted to preach their theology. They inwove it into their poetry, and they gave it a permanent form in the master-works of the chisel; but they never preached it. Plato, Socrates, Zeno, and Epicurus, appointed no preachers to make known their doctrines to the world. Much as they valued the results of their speculations, and important as they deemed them for the good of mankind, they never seem to have supposed that their dogmas contained the elements of powerful oratory. Our recollections of the eloquence of Greece are not in fact associated with them, but with a far different kind of public speaking, for little of the recorded eloquence of Greece grew out of religion. It is not certain but that the speech of the Apostle Paul, on Mars' Hill, was the first specimen of true eloquence, connected with religion, that was ever listened to in Athens. We have among the Greeks, dialogues, disputations, poetry, essays on religion, but no sermons. Their patriotism furnished grounds of lofty appeal to men; their religion none. They embodied their religious conceptions in poetry and in marble; they reared temples, built altars, perpetuated the images of the gods in statuary; but Greece never sent out a preacher to convert the world to its faith. And who now would undertake to preach the theology of Seneca, or of Thompson's Seasons, or of the Spectator or the Rambler? We feel that whatever beauty or propriety these things may have there, they are ill-adapted to the pulpit. When men undertake to preach such a system, the topics of public discourse, always tame and powerless, are soon exhausted; there is nothing to seize strongly upon men, and to alarm their consciences, and to bind their powers to religion; they themselves soon become weary, and are ready to embark in some other profession; they cast about in passing events for new topics of exciting thought in the conscious barrenness of the themes of the pul