40.

HARD-SHELLS.

CCOMPANYING this sketch are two illustrations which need explanation. The first picture, facing this page, represents a preacher before a peculiar and characteristic audience-an audience of turtles seated upon logs in a pond of water, with an alligator lying off to one side. The preacher's text, as seen upon the side of the platform upon which he stands, is: "By grace ye are saved;" and the audience, as you will observe, is deeply intent, heads up, and listening earnestly to the preacher. The alligator, with mouth open, and perhaps suffused with crocodile tears, is specially the hypocrite of the congregation. The doctrine of salvation by grace is profoundly interesting to the elect, and the "Hard-shell" preacher, as he is called, seldom dwells upon any other theme except election and predestination or kindred subjects, so far as my observation has gone. It is justification by faith, "without works," but without the justifying evidence of works. Paul is always referred to, but. James is ignored; and hence going and giving, living and doing for God's glory and the salvation of a perishing world do not belong to the "Hard-shell's" creed. In the second picture the scene is the same and the audience is the same, as you perceive, but another

preacher occupies the platform and appeals to the crusty congregation. He is not necessarily a softshell in some respects, but he is a missionary; and, as you will see, upon the side of his platform he has a different text: "Give, and it shall be given you." Upon the announcement of his text and theme the scene changes, "dissolves like the baseless fabric of a vision, and leaves not a rack behind." It is now tails up instead of heads up. The turtles puli in their heads and then plunge downward from the logs into the water, and nothing is left in sight of that weeping alligator but his last extremity. The preacher stands aghast and in chagrin, and he cries. aloud in vain. All his preaching, all his array of Scripture, all his force of logic is futile. With such a change of preacher and subject comes a collapse of enthusiasm with this audience, and it is as if a wet blanket had been flung over their ardor.

Salvation by grace was extreme unction from on high to the elect, but the doctrine of the "almighty dollar" and of "effort" proves death to emotion and tears, no matter how clear the Scriptures, how cogent the argument, or how eloquent the oratory. The "Hard-shell" turns a deaf ear to every citation from the word of God on this point, or else he turns to rend you with controversy by which he spiritualizes away every passage of divine truth which involves giving, going, or doing for the redemption of the world and for the extension of the Master's kingdom. In the end, if not before, he takes water, as you see the turtles in the second picture; and, strange to say, he generally, though not always, belongs to what is called the "water family," the Baptists (and the writer, being of that family, claims the right to say what he