the gospel is proposed in its place, it will be found that the "gospel"
means that good-nature and that easy virtue which some mortals dare to
attribute to the Holy and Immaculate Godhead! He who really, and in good
faith, preaches the Cross, never opposes the preaching of the law.

Still another reason for the kind of religious discourse which we are
defending is found in the fact that multitudes are expecting a happy
issue of this life, upon ethical as distinguished from evangelical
grounds. They deny that they deserve damnation, or that they need
Christ's atonement. They say that they are living virtuous lives, and are
ready to adopt language similar to that of Mr. Mill spoken in another
connection: "If from this position of integrity and morality we are to be
sent to hell, to hell we will go." This tendency is strengthened by the
current light letters, in distinction from standard literature. A certain
class, through ephemeral essays, poems, and novels, has been plied with
the doctrine of a natural virtue and an innate goodness, until it has
become proud and self-reliant. The "manhood" of paganism is glorified,
and the "childhood" of the gospel is vilified. The graces of humility,
self-abasement before God, and especially of penitence for sin, are
distasteful and loathed. Persons of this order prefer to have their
religious teacher silent upon these themes, and urge them to courage,
honor, magnanimity, and all that class of qualities which imply
self-consciousness and self-reliance. To them apply the solemn words of
the Son of God to the Pharisees: "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin:
but now ye say, We _see_, therefore your sin remaineth."

It is, therefore, specially incumbent upon the Christian ministry, to
employ a searching and psychological style of preaching, and to apply the
tests of ethics and virtue so powerfully to men who are trusting to
ethics and virtue, as to bring them upon their knees. Since these men are