One of the earliest symptoms of apostasy from the pure faith of Christ, is a fastidiousness of hearing, which few preachers can please. The truth as it is in Jesus is tolerated on account of the form or the manner in which it is presented; and the messenger is admired more than the message which he delivers. Though we would not condemn a predilection for the more graceful and the more eloquent appeals of the pulpit, nor insinuate that a correct taste is a _prima facie_ evidence of a heart in a state of departure from God, yet it requires no lengthened argument to prove that when the truths of the gospel are not loved and received for their own sake, and on account of their beneficial tendency, it is a decisive proof that the tone of the mind is injured; and that, notwithstanding the outward appearance of devotion which may be kept up by a professor, he is not walking in the fear of the Lord, nor in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. He may have his favourite preachers; but if the truth which they preach is not esteemed when it is delivered by men equally zealous, and equally devoted to God, though not equally gifted, we are supplied with a melancholy symptom of his being in a backsliding state. It was this spirit of preference for the learning of Paul--for the eloquence of Apollos--and for the peculiar charms of Cephas, amongst the members of the church of Corinth, that the apostle regards as an evidence of their indifference to Christ; and which he adduces as a proof that a corrupt leaven was then working amongst them. "For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos," is it not a convincing proof, that the speaker is more delighted with the correctness of the language which a preacher employs, than the purity of the doctrines which he preaches? Mr. Beaufoy, on his settlement in London, gave a decided preference to the most evangelical and the most experimental preachers in his Connexion; but now he began to admire the most fanciful and the most florid, to whom he listened as an amateur does to a piece of music--more for the gratification of his taste than the spiritual improvement of his mind; and as he could not always hear them, he began to absent himself from the chapel when they were not expected. His habit of attendance at length became so irregular, that some of his Christian brethren, who had watched with great anxiety the progress of his defection, felt it their duty to have him admonished; and they deputed an aged elder, in whom dwelt the spirit of wisdom and of grace, to visit him.