evidence of waking life in the congregation. One measure, losing its power in proportion as it becomes familiar, leads to the introduction of another. A few years since a sermon was preached and published by a somewhat distinguished revivalist, in which the ground was openly taken that there must be a constant succession of new measures in the Church, to keep it alive and awake; since only in this way could we hope to counteract permanently the force of that spiritual gravitation, by which the minds of men are so prone continually to sink towards the earth in the sphere of religion.139 The philosophy this precisely by which the Church of Rome, from the fourth century downward, was actuated in all her innovations. Her worship was designed to make up through the flesh what was wanting in the spirit. The friends of new measures affect to be more free than others from the authority of mere forms. They wish not to be fettered and cramped by ordinary methods. And yet none make more account in fact of forms. They discard old forms, only to trust the more blindly in such as are new. Their methods are held to be all-sufficient for awakening sinners and effecting their conversion! They have no faith in ordinary pastoral ministrations, comparatively speaking; no faith in the Catechism. Converts made in this way are regarded with suspicion. But they have great faith in the Anxious Bench and its accompaniments. Old measures they hold to be in their very nature unfriendly to the spirit of revivals—they are the “letter that killeth”—but new measures “make alive.”140 And yet they are measures when all is done; and it is only by losing sight of the inward power of truth that any can be led to attach to them any such importance.
To rely upon the Anxious Bench, to be under the necessity of having recourse to new measures of any sort to enlist attention or produce effect in the work of the gospel, shows a want of inward spiritual force. If it be true that old forms are dead and powerless in a minister’s hands, the fault is not in the forms, but in the minister himself; and it is the very impotence of quackery to think of mending the case essentially by the introduction of new forms. The man who had no power to make himself felt in the catechetical class is deceived most assuredly and deceives others when he seems to be strong in the use of the anxious bench. Let the power of religion be present in the soul of him who is called to serve at the altar, and no strange fire will be needed to kindle the sacrifice. He will require no new measures. His strength will appear rather in resuscitating, and clothing with their ancient force the institutions and services already established for his use. The freshness of a divine life, always young and always new, will stand forth to view in forms that before seemed sapless and dead.141 Attention will be engaged; interest excited; souls drawn to the sanctuary. Sinners will be awakened and born into the family of God. Christians will be builded up in faith, and made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. Religion will grow and prosper. This is the true idea of evangelical power. But let a preacher be inwardly weak, though ambitious at the same time of making an impression in the name of religion, and he will find it necessary to go to work in a different way. Old forms must needs be dull and spiritless in his hands. His sermons have neither edge nor point. The services of the sanctuary are lean and barren. He can throw no interest into the catechism. He has no heart for family visitation and no skill to make it of any account. Still he desires to be doing something in his spiritual vocation, to convince others and to satisfy himself that he is not without strength. What then is to be done? He must resort to quackery; not with clear consciousness, of course; but instinctively, as it were, by the pressure of inward want. He will seek to do by the flesh what he finds himself too weak to effect by the spirit. Thus it becomes possible for him to make himself felt. New measures fall in exactly with his taste, and are turned to fruitful account by his zeal. He becomes theatrical; has recourse to solemn tricks; cries aloud; takes strange attitudes; tells exciting stories; calls out the anxious, &c. In this way possibly he comes to be known as a revivalist, and is counted among those who preach the Gospel “with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power.”142 And yet when all is done he remains as before without true spiritual strength. New measures are the refuge of weakness.
There may be cases indeed in which genuine power will express itself in new forms. But when this occurs it will always be without ostentation or effort. Miracles are ever natural, as distinguished from mere wonderworks and feats of legerdemain. The form is the simple product of the power it represents, growing forth from it, and filled with it at every point. Where this is the case, what is new is at the same time free and entitled to our respect. But such instances can never authorize imitation where the same inward power is not present. Such imitation is quackery and an argument of weakness. Paul had power to wield the name of Jesus with effect for the expulsion of demons; but when the sons of Sceva, the Jew, undertook to exorcise in the same way, the demoniac fell upon them, and drove them naked and wounded from the house.143 They were quacks. Ezekiel prophesied in the valley of dry bones, and there was a noise and great shaking; but when a preacher, with nothing of Ezekiel’s strength, lays himself out to excite noise and bodily action, as though this must certainly include the breath of life, the whole business sinks into a solemn farce. The Spirit of God, on the day of Pentecost, came like a mighty rushing wind on the disciples in Jerusalem, causing them to speak with tongues; but when a religious meeting is turned into a babel, to make it pentecostal, it deserves to be reprobated as savoring more of hell than heaven. Life is always beautiful in its place; but hideous and ghastly are the muscular actings of a galvanized corpse. An apostrophe from the lips of Whitefield might thrill, like an electric shock, through a whole congregation, and yet be no better than a vulgar mountebank trick, as imitated by an ordinary revivalist, affecting to walk in his steps. An Edwards might so preach the truth as to force his hearers from their seats, and yet be no pattern whatever for those who with design and calculation call in the device of “decision acts,” as they are termed, to create a similar show of power. Whitefield and Edwards needed no new measures to make themselves felt.144 They were genuine men of God, who had strength from heaven in themselves. They were no quacks.
The system of New Measures then is to be deprecated, as furnishing a refuge for weakness and sloth in the work of the ministry, and in this way holding out a temptation, which, so far as it prevails, leads ministers to undervalue and neglect the cultivation of that true inward strength without which no measures can be at last of much account. This is a great evil.
It is a vastly more easy thing to carry forward the work of religion in this way than it is to be steadily and diligently true to the details of ministerial duty as prescribed by the apostle Paul: to be “vigilant, sober and of good behavior,” not “selfwilled, not soon angry . . . just, holy, temperate,” “one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity,” “holding fast the faithful word in such sort that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convince the gainsayers,” to “follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness,” so as to be “an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity,” to be “gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves,” to meditate on divine things, and to be wholly given to them, so as to be continually profiting in the view of all, to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ,” to be a scribe well instructed in the law, “a workman that need not to be ashamed,”145 able to bring forth from the treasury of God’s word things new and old as they may be wanted, to preach week after week so as to instruct and edify the souls of men, to be earnest, faithful, pungent in the lecture room and catechetical class, to be known in the family visitation, in the sick chamber, in the dwelling places of poverty and sorrow, as the faithful pastor, “watching for souls,” whose very presence serves to remind men of holiness and heaven, not at certain seasons only, but from month to month, from one year always to another. All this is something great and difficult, and not to be compassed without a large amount of inward spiritual strength. But it calls for comparatively little power for a man to distinguish himself as a leader in
