Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/109

Rh less. To neglect this consideration partakes of the same error, as if one should reckon all preaching nugatory, which did not expressly place the highest matters of faith in the most affecting point of view. If Christianity be a great system, such a test of preaching must be incorrect: and if the Sunday Lessons be a series, it will never do to censure any one chapter as unedifying, except you can produce one more edifying, which would come in equally well at the same point of the series.

I will take the example which appears to myself the most doubtin the whole Calendar. At first sight, almost any one would say, that 2 Sam. xxi. might with great advantage be changed for 1 Kings, iii. or viii. the dream of Solomon, or the dedication of the Temple. Not so, perhaps, when we come to recollect, that the melancholy tale of the ruin of Saul's family is completed in the first-mentioned chapter, and with it the denunciation of such perverse conduct as drew down the curse upon him. The other chapters, however instructive in themselves, can hardly with so much propriety be said to make part of the system of warning.

And surely those who, in whole or in part, are for disturbing that system, should look to it, that they be well provided with somewhat, on the whole, more edifying, in its room. Else they may go far towards depriving the Church of a great help to practical knowledge, and to the true use of the Old Testament. Inadequate views of that portion of God's Word have ever been found fruitful in heresy, filling men's hearts with perplexity and irreverence. Can it be denied, that our own times show fearful symptoms in that quarter? There is room for not a little anxiety, surely, lest a clue to many Scripture difficulties, so necessary to the people's welfare, and, (may we not say?) so providentially put into the Pastor's hands, should be let drop, because some of us do not always clearly see which way it is leading them.

It may be said, the alterations proposed would not amount to a disturbance of the general system. This the writer begs leave to doubt; since it is conceived a very moderate alteration, which shall include all the following particulars, "some, (at least three I suppose,) of the Proper Lessons for the Sundays in Lent, five chapters in Deuteronomy, two in Jeremiah, four in Ezekiel," and the principles on which these are made specimens of "omittenda," would as well justify the omission of at least twenty more. Either, therefore, the rule of selection adopted by Archbishop Parker must be