Year: 1873

Birth and Baptism. Dfsc0urses Of First


Principles. BY Ephraim Chamberlain i'm


Cummings. Portland, 1873


This volume has been prepared and pub
lished as memorial of a pastorate extending
over several years, and developing between
pastor and people an unusually strong person
al attachment. The hold which the preacher
and teacher obtained over his parishioners as
such, grew into friendship which retains its
vitality and beauty even now that official con-
nection has ceased. This, of itself, is conclu-
sive evidence Of the value and gennineness
of the ministry of Mr.. Cummings at st. Johns
bury. In reading the discourses of which
this volume is made up, VIC discover at least
a portion of the secret of this affe:tionate
and enduring sympathy; they are written in
the very spirit of the Gospel itself; they
abound in revelations Of the writer's interior
mind, which is at once, of an ardent spiritual
force and Of most delicate refinement; and
they prove that it was through the yearnings
of his own heart that he was able to approach
the hearts of others. To those who sat nm
der his ministration these pages speak with
the added eloquence Of remembered voice,
while to those who only meet him in his book,
there will come, with its perusal, a clear con-
viction of his earnestness and of his skill in
setting forth those truths which cannot too
often claim our serious attention. He calls
them "First Principles and truly they are
such in the spiritual economy He gives us,
in his opening discourse, the Birth of our
Lord in language full of the picturesque por-
trayal of the circumstances which attended
it, and in so doing he brings to light the
spiritual first principles which underlie the
birth of each fresh human soul into itJ king
dom, whereof perhaps the crown may also be
of thorns. He tells of the baptism OF John,
and applies the meaning which IL pore, 10
that OF ali preparatory steps for setting the
heavenly above the earthly. He dwells upon
the Passion of our Lord as exempllfying those
deeper experiences of the soul, by which we
are best fitted to know, to do and to endure.
And in the sermon on The Comforter he
lays down the axiom that obedience and faith
must precede the reception of that peace
which passeth all understanding.


In the gradual unfolding OF the writer's
plan certain progressive arrangement OF top
les is made, and from the beginning OF the
Christians career, as exemplified in the birth
of Jesus, he is led on through regeneration,
ercise of all his moral qualities, and the visi-
bic realization of his faith in his life. Words
of good cheer are spoken all the way. and
there is constantly apparent tender impulse
to pour forth personal love of the Saviour.
and the power of reproducing with great
vividness those events in the life of Jesus m
on which human sympathy and spiritual emo
tic ton have seized with appropriating forces.
There Is as much of genial sweetness in his
representation OF the means by which the
soai may win tne salvation it desires, ,as of fer
lay. The discourses are as free from contro-
versy or dogmatic assumption as thew are
penetrated BY that quiet personal conviction,
winch supplies more weighty authority than