Α SERIES OF SERMONS, TO WHICH IS ADDED AN ORATION ON MORAL FREEDOM. BY D. N. SHELDON, D.D. PASTOR OF THE ELM-ST. BAPTIST CHURCH IN BATH, ME. SECOND EDITION. BOSTON: CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY. CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHARD. b1344.30 15 W.B. Brigge Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the PREFACE. THE title prefixed to these Sermons is a sufficiently accurate indication of the topics considered in them, and is, I think, as appropriate as any that could be put in its stead. It applies generally to all but the first sermon in the volume; or, if any choose, they may except also the second and the eleventh; though probably few readers will think it necessary to embrace in the exception the second; since a right view of the original nature of man is indispensable to the correct understanding and the proper treatment of sin. The first sermon is not supposed to contain anything, which has not in effect been said before by writers on the being of God; and it would not have appeared in this volume, had not a wish been signified to me that the entire series on Genesis-the first five discourses here embraced-might be given to the public. Possibly, however, the note following this first sermon, and sketching the brief outline of an argument for the noneternity of matter, will attract the notice of a few; though I may not hope that all of these will agree with me. The sermon on the Temptation and Fall does not claim to be much more than an application of the well known doctrines of Bishop Butler, in his Analogy, to these recorded facts in the history of our first parents. The last in the collec tion was preached before the New York Baptist Union for Ministerial Education, at the annual meeting of this Society in Rochester, July 11, 1854. All the other sermons have been preached within the last few months to my congregation in Bath. The discourse delivered at Rochester is here inserted, because its publication has been often requested by friends, and because the matters contained in it are pertinent to the subjects considered in this volume. It is but justice to add, that several persons, not of my own congregation, but among my occasional hearers, have joined in the request that most of these sermons should be printed, and have contributed freely towards defraying the expense. I hope that each of the sermons will be found to be a direct, earnest and somewhat thorough discussion of the particular subject which it considers. I have spoken. plainly, frankly and independently, as it was my privilege and my duty to speak. I should be ashamed of myself as a religious teacher, could I not say thatI have been conscious to myself of no other motive, than an honest desire to arrive at and utter the truth. I have no sympathy with the timidity which may deter any from an open declaration of their views, because these views may be thought to conflict with an ac credited standard of orthodoxy. Though numbering myself with the orthodox so called, on the subject of the Divinity of our Lord, and on other subjects, I must yet disavow altogether the binding authority of any extra-scriptural definitions and statements of orthodoxy. The only orthodoxy which I venerate is truth, and what may be shown to have the marks of truth. I believe that much of the received dogmatic theology needs to be searchingly reëxamined and amended. What is held as fundamental truth in ethics must not be contradicted by anything in our theological systems. I by no means insinuate that any men knowingly teach an immoral theology; but many preachers would, I think, find it difficult to evince the consistency of what they acknowledge in morals, with some things which they inculcate from their pulpits. Still there can be no doubt, that between moral, and religious or theological truth, an entire harmony ought to appear. Even our faith in Scripture would receive a fearful recoil, if Scripture were found, as it is not, teaching anything in conflict with our moral judgments; for deeper than our reverence for any external revelation, underlying this reverence and the chief foundation of it, must be our reverence for God and for moral truth. Nor does this language hinder us from freely confessing, that to the Bible we owe very much of our actual reverence for God and for the moral law; for while the Bible does not give us our moral nature, it yet, more powerfully than anything else, appeals to, awakens |