HYMN. AWAKED by Sinai's awful sound, Amazed I stood, but could not tell When to the law I trembling fled, This fearful truth increased my pain; Again did Sinai's thunder roll, The saints I heard with rapture tell But while I thus in anguish lay, To heaven the joyful tidings flew ; "All hail the Lamb that once was slain : Shall sing thine endless praise." OCCUM. SERMON DCL. BY REV. ROBERT M'GONEGAL, PROVINCETOWN, MASS. THE SPIRITUAL CULTURE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY.* "The Lord shall count, when He writeth up the people, that this man was born there."-Ps. lxxxvii. 6. THE Scenographic locality understood in the text is the city of the glorified state-the Heavenly Jerusalem-wherein the ransomed children of God shall be finally assembled together, to be registered among its holy inhabitants. The places whence they shall be gathered, as distinctly taught throughout the entire psalm, are all parts of the globe ever to be inhabited by the family of man. The specific condition, which decides the question of eligibility to a place among the population of the city of God, is birth in Zion-held, by universal consent, to be the militant church of Christ in the present world. Thus we possess one of the great and cheering truths of the divine Word-the citizens of that realm of beatitudes are to come from among all the races of the earth, for it is written, "the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it." Citizenship in the militant church is not a simple idea, but is complex -embracing all that culture, or discipline, or training, which make the true and robust christian character. For, the term city supposes the existence of an organized government; also the reciprocal relation of government and subject. It further comprises the operation of all those educational institutions and auspices, by whose influences christians are reared up, from the earliest age to the ripest manhood. The chief principle, however, which blazes forth with the brightest flame, is, that the Sovereign authority, or ruling power, of both the earthly and the heavenly church, is identical. There is also a transfer of citizens from one branch of the spiritual church of God to the other. Hence the phrase, "the Lord shall count, when He writeth up the people," shows the ground on which a name is entered in the registers of that celestial city, that it be found in the genealogical records of the people of God-the Zion of this probationary world. There is here a truthful correspondence between the teachings of a genuine philosophy and the word of God, that the high culture more than implied in citizenship among the people of God on earth, is an indispensable prerequisite preparation for a place among His people of a glorified state. But the lowest condition on which God recognizes any man to be of the seed of Abraham, in this state of being is, that he experience spiritual regeneration. The conclusion follows with the resistless force of moral demonstration, that He can be satisfied with nothing less than this, * Preached before a Sunday School Convention at North Bridgewater, Mass., Octo ber 10, 1854, and published by request. in a standard of antecedent preparation for the society of saints made perfect, in a higher and holier state. Yet, by a careful perusal of the christian system, taught in the New Testament, we learn of provisions made on a scale of the grandest benevolence, to educate and prepare the most magnificent and perfect samples, or patterns, of man made holy, for the saintship of the New Jerusalem. This world is, therefore, the appointed arena whereon the "School of Christ" is to achieve its victories over both flesh and spirit, in their entire subjugation to the dominion of grace-whereon the war of faith, and hope, and love is to be waged, for the full unfolding of a character "perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord." But principles should be exemplified in the concrete-not held alone in the abstract. We, therefore, hold that all churches holding the great practical truths of New Testament evangelism, are responsible to God and this age for the light which they may cause to shine. This is emphatically a teaching age; but the church of God should specially teach from the lively oracles committed to her. Nor ought she to train the thousands who daily come to her gates to seek the blessed shade of her institutions, for life and its multiplied forms of business responsibilitynor for a high intellectual standing-nor for places of conflict with the scientific infidelity of the times-nor chiefly for a position in the visible church-but rather for the ranks of the triumphant church, the city of angels and of God. Teach our children and youth the experimental marrow of the gospel. What is best for heaven is best for the visible church-and whatever prepares for the earthly house of God, is qualifying in the highest style of preparation for the state above. Qualifications for the heavenly worid, for the christian church, and for the great American Republic, may and should be blended in the same nobly finished character. Such we believe to be the man wanted by the times-such in divine learning-such in experience-such in moral beauty and strength -such in scriptural wisdom. Fully persuaded of the truthfulness and safety of our position-of its not being without precedent of its meeting with favor among the true evangelical Israel of God, both in this and in other countries, with the greatest hope that good may be the result of our deliberations, we proceed to our theme for the present interesting occasion. The spiritual culture of the christian system to be taught in the Sabbath schools of evangelical christianity. I. Evangelical christianity teaches the regeneration of human nature. This is the beginning of the new spiritual life, therefore a matter of understanding to the pupils of christianity. It is fundamental to her identity. We regard this great work as the commencement of a new relationship with the Divine Being, termed heirship with Christ. The most ingenious and penetrating of mankind could never have invented a thought of so great magnitude, and filled with so many wonders of condescension and grace. In the word of God, it is designated as a second birth, a birth from above, a divine resurrection, Christ formed in the heart, partaking of the Divine nature. When regarded strictly, its position forbids that we pronounce it a process of cultivation. Yet it is both an antecedent and a condition; S going before any positive steps of training, and being a relation of new creation, it is a condition on which depends all that can afterwards follow. We may count this spiritual change a part of the edifice, on account of its similitude to the foundation of a building, on whose firm and supernatural basis or structure the superfabric may afterwards be reared. We regard this doctrine of the birth from above as the fundamental one of the venerable christian system; it therefore justly enters most deeply into the spirit, the experience, the beliefs, and the activities of the most retired and private life of religion. Our ways of spiritual life, our modes of thought, our varieties in feeling and sentiment, our mental and spiritual habits from hence take their direction and their coloring. In this regard, a new-born soul truly hath a new secret life, of which no other one can form the most distant conception, for he sees things, and hears things, and feels things, and enjoys things, by faith, to which others are strangers. His private life, like that of other men, lies where no eye but the omniscient one rests upon him, but here the parallel ends, for he alone of all men walks and communes with God. In social life, amidst a thousand varied influences, and characters, and personages, the history of divine children, of divinely regenerated humanity, is essentially the same, possesses a remarkable identity in the style of its associations, and in the quality of its companionships. Equally true is it, and for kindred reasons and on similar grounds, that the more manifest and public life of a christian is not identical with that of other men. The radical origin of a holy life is so opposite, and the principles so dissimilar, and the ends of temporal being so great a contrast to the life, and principles, and ends of life of an unholy one, that the currents of existence may flow indefinitely near and parallel to each other, but they will never commingle their waters nor become one. The reason is evident; the present being, with the one, proceeds according to the law of life, while with the other, it is ruled according to a changeless law of death. Precisely at this point, evangelical christianity should be wisely guard ed. This can not be done till her nurseries of instruction are conducted on the true principles, and in her own spirit. These must be operated on. the axiomatic truth that, every institution, every character among men, and the practical life of man, cannot have too much of the moving hand of God in them. A basis of instruction is wanted, wherein the hand of ignorance, of instability, of corruption, of guilt, and of superlative weakness, is little known, except as an agency of conveyance, and wherein the power, which is all-moving, and grace, which is all-conquering, may reveal their quenchless energies. The human mind, before it has learned to be skeptical, or become the prey of doubt or theorizing, is eminently recumbent. It revels in the greatest satisfaction when it finds an earnestly sought pillar, against whose mighty form it may lean, amid the tremulous vibrations of human opinion, and the commotions of a conjectural faith. Regeneration is such a pillar. The eternal God has reared it, and on its majestic proportions He has written His name. Though unknown to human philosophy-though unseen by the wise ones of the world-though a stranger to the ethics of mere intellect-though eschewed in the pantheistic philosophy of modern times, still it is the vital law of spiritual lifeit is the dignity of man-it is the wisdom of God. We recognize in this principle what, in the appliances of human governments, is termed naturalization. Its positions and relations to the va\rious parts of the divine economy, are in all essential particulars analogous. It is that process which ends in an alien becoming invested with the rights and privileges of a native citizen. It is, therefore, both an act of favor and of ability on the part of a beneficent government, and a work of relationship done for and in the nature of the alien. The Majesty of Heaven, by every possible right which can inhere in the Creator, the Preserver, and the Benefactor, superadded to all which attaches to the merciful Saviour of fallen man, prescribes what conditions shall be met, and what work of naturalization shall be wrought prior to an alien being made a subject and a citizen of grace. A change of nature, in which the individual becomes both a passive recipient and an active agent, is this work, by virtue of which a child of darkness becomes a child of light-one of death is transformed into one of life. Every scion of our degenerate humanity is a partaker of the degeneracy of the parent stock. Anterior to the change under contemplation, than which there is none greater or more important in the history of man's being, every child, of all and even the best of parents, baptized or unbaptized, is a foreigner is subject to the powers of another realm-is in heart an enemy to the rule of Christ, till he makes the ultimate election, and is made a subject of God by the spiritualizing agency of the Holy Ghost. This is our reply, should the question be proposed, why we would teach this great doctrine to the young of our Sabbath schools, because God has taught it to us, and what the Great Parent of all has made known as of the highest importance to us, is doubtless of the greatest moment to those who bear our name, and blood, and infirmities, and examples with them through the world. This basis of christian culture being understood as such, the obligation to teach it to our children is as imperative as the dangers to their faith on this vital point are imminent. Besides this, should it not be so taught, we have no substitute but that terrible philosophy, which makes Christ a better sort of man-regeneration a calling out the latent good of human nature-christianity a very high and valuable philosophy-the atonement the death of a noble man for his noble principles-and which transmutes the genial piety of the gospel into cold morality. What we here teach is fundamental to the most liberal scale of spiritual education. Adapted to the masses in their lowest grovelings in vice, and fitted to the wants of the higher grades of society, it meets with an equally nice adjustment the lowly mind and the highly cultured taste. It provides the reformatory power so urgently sought. It supplies the element of stability so imperatively demanded by the times. To be all this to the present age, it proposes to make each man strong in himself. The individuals are born of a strong God, therefore the aggregated strength of the christian church. The oak is firm because his every fibre is strong. We wonder at that mighty influence, which enchains the orbs of universal nature in the magnificent whole, and each part in its own system, but still more are we astonished to perceive the bonds of an all-pervading and an all-uniting force extending its attractive power into the minutest particle of sand in the stupendous frame. Not all the universe of God-not its individual systems-not each particular orb alone, but the smallest grain |