"My brethren, it is a most serious question to be always studying, how we may so proclaim the truth committed to us in Holy Scripture, that in the sense of the Apostles it may be said of us in our whole ministry that "we preach Christ crucified." To this we devote this address. It is a great question indeed. Many are the failures -- many the egregious failures. Sometimes it seems as if the preacher could preach just as he does if Christ and his work were a mere incidental in religion, a name, and little more -- answering now and then as a convenience to a sentence; introduced occasionally, because, under some texts, not easily avoided, but never as the root and foundation out of which our whole ministry proceeds. But what dreadful condemnation to be thus essentially defective at the very heart of the great work committed to us! Nothing can in the least atone for its absence. You might as well attempt to turn night into day, by lighting a candle as a substitute for the sun. Our ministry is all darkness, emptiness, and impotence; all condemnation to us, all delusion to those who hear us, all dishonor to the grace of God, whatever the breath of man may say of it, except as it is pervaded, illumined, filled with the testimony of Christ as once the sacrifice for sin, crucified and slain; now the glorified and ever-living intercessor for all that come unto God by him."
Charles Pettit McIlvaine was an Episcopalian bishop, author, educator and twice Chaplain of the United States Senate. In 1820 he was ordained to the deaconate in Philadelphia, and was soon after called to Christ Church in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. In 1822 he was appointed chaplain to the U.S. Senate.
From 1825 to 1827, McIlvaine served as chaplain and professor of ethics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his students included Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.
In 1827 McIlvaine declined the presidency of The College of William & Mary but accepted a call to St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn, New York. In 1831 he was named professor of the evidences of revealed religion at the University of the City of New York.
In 1832, he became the 2nd president of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and also the second Bishop of Ohio.
He was a leading advocate of Evangelicalism, and wrote a noted rebuttal of the Oxford Movement, Oxford Divinity Compared with That of the Romish and Anglican Churches.
He was the 28th bishop consecrated in The Episcopal Church.
Bishop McIlvaine was so highly respected internationally (for his opposition to the Catholic-leaning Oxford movement within the Episcopal Church) that, shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, President Lincoln asked him to go to England to argue against British recognition of the Confederacy. He often had coffee at Buckingham Palace, lunched with faculty members at Oxford, conversed with cabinet members, and influenced debate in the House of Commons.
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