PRELIMINARY REMARKS. EVANGELICAL PREACHING. Will they believe, though credulous enough Their hopes, desires, and purposes estranged COWPER. It will not, I trust, be deemed irrelevant to prefix to these specimens of the preaching of a minister eminently evangelical, in the truest sense of the term, a few observations on the doctrines to which that epithet is usually applied. Evangelical preaching is a phrase much in vogue at the present moment, and therefore it is of the utmost importance that it should be clearly defined; for there is not a more mournful symptom of a defective perception of the b force and beauty of truth, than the disposition to trifle with and misapply words of the most solemn import. A discourse to be evangelical, must be undoubtedly according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. To preach evangelically, therefore, is to preach Christ. Hence the question resolves itself into the inquiry-what is it to preach Christ? To preach Christ is, clearly to declare that which he has revealed of himself, and of the nature of his great salvation-his divinity, his incarnation, his atonement, his exaltation, his intercession, his coming to judgment, his gift of the Holy Spirit, &c. Here however, a wider field opens before us, than can possibly be embraced within the compass of a short essay; nor do I intend to notice more than a few of the leading points, which have been most animadverted upon by men, who are opposed to the sentiments now so extensively taught in the pulpits of our land. I shall endeavour to prove that "these peculiarities of the evangelical school"1 do not, to use the 1 Foster in his Essay "on the aversion of men of taste to evangelical religion" observes, "those distinctions from which they recoil, are chiefly comprised in that view of christianity which, among a large proportion of the professors of it, is denominated in a somewhat specific sense, evangelical |