08 The Romance of Modern Preaching

LECTURE VIII THE ROMANCE OF MODERN PREACHING THE danger of lectures that deal mainly with. the past, is lest the final Impression should be left, that our own time is in the nature of an anti-climax to the illustrious generations we have been passing in review; that the great gates leading into the spacious lands of opportunity are all closed, and that nothing remains to us but some shabby and petty doors giving upon meager and uninteresting fields. Some critics speak as if there would have been no romantic or heroic chapters in Christian history, but for the grim and forbidding figures of the bigot and the tyrant, with all their sinister apparatus of torture and death. Sermons have been preached in celebration of the funeral of bigotry; though bigotry takes a deal of burying, and has singular gifts of resurrection after its obsequies have been ostensibly performed. Nevertheless, the arm of the persecutor has been so far shortened that we no longer see the blackened stake in the market-place; and the instruments by which heretics were put to the question, are regarded as the evil evidence of an intolerance and an inhumanity that we have outgrown. Now and then, even in those days, our heroes and heroines suffer death at the hands of those who know not what they do. Still the graves of the self-exiled evangelists of the Cross multiply in fever-haunted lands; and lonely saints make brotherhood with lepers, or burn out for Christ among savages on remote islands or in the dark African interior. But apart altogether from the fascination of incidents such as these, which lend themselves to picturesque descriptions, I am determined to persuade you in this closing lecture that the work of the preacher in modern times remains as romantic and dramatic as ever. The question is whether we believe in the mission of the Christian prophet as Wagner, let us say, believed in the mission of Music, or G. F. Watts in the mission of Art. Of the latter, as you may remember, a modern poet wrote these fine lines by way of epitaph:

“He knew her destined mission, dared to hail The place assigned her in the heavenly plan, Reader of visions hid behind the veil;

Elect interpreter of God to man." That is no more than to say that George Frederick Watts was an artist with the soul of a prophet; and that with his canvas for pulpit he preached, and will preach as long as his pictures last, sermons that prove him to be verily an "elect interpreter of God to man." In whatever medium he works, the man who has the soul of the prophet will fulfill the same mission. His will be the skill to read the "visions hid behind the veil." He will keep alive the faith and the knowledge that there is a world of reality behind the veil. Thus he will fulfill his destiny to deliver his generation from the dark influences of a materialistic science, and to restore Faith, Hope and Love as the guiding and governing realities of life. Let me repeat what I have said before—that if the preacher is doomed to disappear as rationalism and materialism triumph, then the poet, the artist and the musician will disappear in like manner at the same time and for the same reason. But now let us ask ourselves, what it is about our high calling that gives it a perennial fascination and glory? For the only thing that can kill preaching is, that we should lose the sense of its majesty and unique authority. The first thing that I would say is, that preaching can never lose its place so long as the mystery and wonder of the human spirit remain. For we are dealing with that which is the source of all the amazing interest of life. Man is a creature mystically elect to strange conflicts and adventures of mind and soul. He stands alone in God’s august creation, in that he knows the exaltation of spiritual vision, and the humiliation of remorse for sin. He has inexplicable beatitudes, and as inexplicable sorrows. His mysterious history is blood stained and tragic; but it is lighted everywhere with almost incredible heroism. Robert Louis Stevenson would persuade us that personality is dual, and that every soul among us is half angel and half devil. Certain it is that underneath purely worldly exteriors, dwell unsuspected philanthropies and benevolences. Sordid and callous speculators whose ambition seems to be to rig markets, or inflate and depress shares at will, have pure affections and holy memories lying detached from their daily business existence, like a ring of lilies around some foul morass. Conversely, some men and women to whom the world bows down in respect and esteem, carry with them the memory of secret sins, the consequences of which all their zeal cannot overtake. The homes of the poor are the dwelling-places of romance. Not a tenement staircase that does not echo to the feet of Love and Hope, and all the attendant train of ministering angels; while Jealousy, Envy and Despair and their evil brood are to be met there likewise. I venture to say it is the experience of all those who visit sympathetically among the poor, that they rarely come across any house where, in some corner or other, they do not distinguish the footprints of the Son of Man; He makes the place of His feet glorious. The more we know of life the more we discover what compensations and alleviation’s are due to the divine capacities of the human spirit. The child of poverty sits in some corner of the ill furnished room. She is reading the story of "Ivanhoe," and following breathlessly the adventures of the stainless Knight. For a while she is not in that wretched home at all. For her the lists are set, and the lances conched, and the horses caparisoned. To her knights bow, and courtiers bend, and grand ladies smile. Forgotten are hunger and hardship and the dreary outlook. She too is "carried away in the spirit." How our hearts would leap if we could really read all that lies behind the faces that confront us so enigmatically on the Sunday. What of their faiths and their doubts; their ambitions and dissatisfactions; their yearnings and wistfulness--and all covered with so impenetrable a mask that except in rare cases of confidence their nearest and dearest friends are not permitted to penetrate beneath the surface to the intimacy of their real life? Yet suddenly, at any moment, that may happen which will break up all reserve, and bring the strong man to you groping blindly for light, pleading for help and comfort like a little child. For the hour cometh to all when it is Jesus Christ or nothing; and all the dollars in America cannot pay the passage-money across the inevitable sea.

We preachers live always in the conscious presence of the supreme mysteries. We deal with men and women, many of whom are afraid to face them. It is our business to know what doubt and grief and death can do; it is our business to prove what, given the Gospel, doubt and grief and death cannot do. But I should delude you if I were to suggest, that this sacred task is to any of us at any time an easy one. The first incident in my own ministry that I vividly remember, was connected with a bright young girl who on her twenty-first birthday was enjoying a picnic-party on the Thames. Her lover went to the side of the launch to get a campstool for a friend, tripped and fell into the river and was drowned before her eyes. In a moment life’s happiest pageantry turned to darkest tragedy. Well do I remember being asked to go and see this stricken one, and I shall never forget pacing up and down the street outside the house with the drawn blinds, trying to muster up courage to go in. Why had no one told me that the Christian ministry was like this? I can see now in the dark room the white marble face as of one changed to stone; I can see her holding out hands to me for faith, when I was bankrupt of my own!

It is easy to stand up in a pulpit, and to a listening crowd preach the truth of Christianity; but the preacher has to say something that will count for faith and comfort, when souls are tortured by sorrow almost to the last agony. Have you taken a walk in the spring time, and felt disposed to take your shoes from off your feet before the miracle of a flowering thorn? What a little while ago was a bunch of black stems, with forbidding spikes and thorns, is now a glorious mass of gay flowers, shedding fragrance all around. What a Divine touch it is that can make the thorn to flower, and express its inner life in such rare grace and scene! Have we a like Divine secret to turn the thorns of life to beauty and sweetness? Let no man venture into the ministry without that knowledge. It is the veritable key that opens the dungeon of Despair. The men who interest and fascinate us most are they who illustrate the wonder of the human spirit, and teach us preachers with what potentialities we have to deal. Man’s uniqueness in the universe lies in the wrestlings that are not with flesh and blood, the struggle for existence that is not physical but spiritual, the conflicts with principalities and powers that are invisible but real. Bunyan suffered much from external persecutions, but no one who has read his autobiography can possibly believe that his physical sufferings in prison, were at all comparable to his agony of mind and spirit, when doubts threatened the faith that was the very breath of life to him. Cromwell knew the pains and hardships of the battle-field and the sorrows that scorn and hatred can inflict; but his greatest conflicts were in the spirit, and his hardest fights were with himself and his own passionate temper and disposition. Luther tasted to the full the cup of tribulation and anxiety; but you must read his commentaries to discover that the fiercest war he waged was not with the Church of Rome, but with the treachery of his own heart and will.

You will ask yourselves whether such men as these are alone in their mysterious strife, or whether it is in some degree appointed to us all. What means this exercise of the mind and soul in the problems of faith? Have we not problems enough of a more practical sort? Why is mankind thus tormented with spiritual anxieties? Why, indeed, if the skeptic philosophy of today be true which reduces all faith to illusion, and spiritual vision to the agitation of certain nerve-centers! By that interpretation, the noblest chapters in biography are the record of incredible folly and stupendous tragedy. These agonies of the higher life, that mark the progress of man with drops of bloody sweat, that distinguish all his pilgrimage through the valley of humiliation and the shadow of death—what are they but the proofs of the divinity of the human spirit, and its struggles in the grip of the consciousness of its destiny, and of the sublime imperative of faith? The second thing I would say to you is, that amid all changes of thought and phrase the wonder of conversion remains, to be the supreme joy and glory of the preacher. A congregation gathered in the name of Christ, and prepared by prayer for that message which is the supreme call to life, is to me a momentous assembly. It is the arena where God and Self fight out stupendous duels. It furnishes an atmosphere in which anything may happen. At any moment Saul may come to his crisis and the new Paul be born. For our Gospel is not the survival of the fit; but the revival of the unfit. And here in the society of Christ, those divine forces are leagued and focussed which decide the destinies of individuals, and even of nations. Within that congregation men are being braced up for big renunciations, and sacrificial enterprises. The voice from the pulpit is the ally of the trembling and even fainting soul, that is at the point of giving up the battle for virtue and righteousness. Lame consciences struggle to their feet again. Nerveless wills are stiffened and strengthened. It is as if a wave of pure ozone passed over the breathers of some exhausted air. You feel the stir of hope. Feeble and enervated spirits drink the elixir of life, and are conscious of recovery of tone and health. The tonic air from the hills of God works its miracle of rejuvenation, and faith is born again.

There are so many sorts of conversion. It is conversion when the faithless soul believes; and it is conversion when a little faith becomes a larger faith. It is conversion when bad men become good men; and it is conversion when good men become better men. It is conversion when the hands that hang down are lifted up; and when the lame and erring feet are turned back into the way. It is conversion when the business standards of the world are exchanged for higher and more human standards; and when the decision to do the brave and honorable thing forces itself within a worldly mind. While the preacher is at work, any one and all of these changes may take place. If he believes in his business, and in the cooperation of the Divine Spirit, he expects great events to happen. No service can ever fall to the dead level of the commonplace. Every hour spent within that atmosphere of faith, beneath the spell of Christ’s presence and personality, is charged with mystic feeling. My own personal belief is that we do not realize, as we might, the possibility of sudden conversions. When we read the story of Henry Barrows, who was one of the founders of modern Congregationalism, passing down the Strand in a wild mood, and entering a church to scoff, and remaining to pray, passing as Lord Bacon said "at one leap" from a libertine youth to "preciseness of conduct," we do not doubt the story, and all Barrows’ after life until the day of his martyrdom was a witness to its reality. But who can explain that magic leap of the spirit from dissoluteness to uprightness, and from the darkness of doubt to the light of faith? Was such an experience possible only in days of intellectual renaissance, or moral revival? Is it too much to hope that the assembly of praying and believing souls, and the witness of God’s ambassador, may still lay a sacred spell upon the soul? In the biography of one, who even in our tolerant nineteenth century suffered imprisonment in England for conscience’ sake, and wrote in his prison a history of America, it is told how in his careless youth he was arrested by the preacher’s message; and when, at the close of the sermon, the congregation began to sing the quaint old hymn "If Jesus is yours, you have a true friend; His goodness endures the same to the end.

Though pleasures may tarry and comforts decline He cannot miscarry, His aid is divine,"

"such was the emotion I experienced," he says, "that I cried out before them all--’ Jesus is mine!" That experience was one on which he never went back; and the Presence he realized then and there lighted in later days his prison cell. But my question is whether we have lost the capacity to force careless and worldly hearers to review their life? Possibly if your children of body were suddenly to rise up and make use of some such exclamation as I have indicated, you would call in the family physician, and ask him whether he thought it was the liver or the nerves. The very possibility of those searching spiritual experiences which shake life to its center seems so remote to most of us, that it can hardly be said to come within our consciousness. Yet there is not one of us who does not know that, historically, these sudden illuminations have often marked the birth-hour of new eras of human progress. I have never thought that John Wesley was a very likely subject for abrupt mental or spiritual change; for in many ways he was compact of ecclesiastical prejudices. Yet at that little Moravian room in Aldersgate Street, when suddenly he became conscious of that strange inward warmth and light of which he wrote so simply and nobly, Mr. Lecky tells us a new chapter in English history was opened, and, I may add, one of the most fruitful of all chapters.

Those ministers, if such there be, who do not believe in these swift crises in man’s intellectual and spiritual life, are those who are still the victims of the false view of time, and who have not yet realized with what freight of significance these flying minutes may be laden. This belongs to the romance of our opportunity, that so much destiny may be crowded into so brief an occasion. The surgeon may make careful preparations, but how deft and swift is the critical work when the cataract has at last to be removed from the eye. The miracle of spiritual sight giving is swifter still. The flash of a thought--who can measure the duration of it? The glow of a new-born affection—who can estimate the length of time of its origin? The outreach of the soul in faith towards its Savior—by what principles can you judge if it be swift or slow? All that we know is that God can do His most amazing work on human souls with a rapidity that even to think of dazzles us. We have ceased to repeat, and perhaps to believe, the old lines:

"Between the saddle and the ground I mercy sought, and mercy found." But no transition of thought will ever destroy the inherent truth and beauty of the memorable sentence in Hawthorne’s "Blithedale Romance," describing the suicide of Zenobia, "the fleeting moment after Zenobia sank into the dark pool—when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips--was as long, in its capacity of God’s infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the world."

Again, and in the same connection, let me remind you that the preacher is always living through the romance of the spring tide. The spring tide is the time of mystic changes; when unpromising and unattractive seeds and bulbs are clothed upon with a miraculous raiment of loveliness. It is the time when myriads of unsuspected germs of life break forth into living green, and array themselves in gay and glistering garments. It is the time when the soft compelling breath of spring touches the withered and decaying trunks of ancient trees, and the magic sap travels up their gnarled and knotted frames and crowns them once again with glory of leaf and fruit. It is the time when the shepherd and the laborer find their pathways on field and hillside brave with shining flowers. It is the time when even the slum child’s seeds in a broken flower-pot on a rusty balcony, where the rays of the sun are rare visitors, answer to the secret call to life and put forth bloom and fragrance. All this, God help us, we take for granted; and our modern souls are too full of the notion that it is scientifically explicable to surrender to the simple imperishable marvel and rapture of it. But we preachers have yet to learn that the greatest thing God ever does, is not when He spins His worlds in space, or regenerates the face of nature by the annual miracle of spring, but when human hearts cry out with unspeakable joy, "As for our transgressions Thou shalt purge them away." The Hand that can reach to the secret springs of life, and purify them, washing the stain from the conscience, and cleansing the imagination of its pollution’s, is engaged in performing the most amazing miracle in time. In the true church it is always springtime. From January to December is one season of regeneration. Revival is often thought of as spasmodic and occasional; but that is our fault. It is normal. The Resurrection time is not at Easter alone. There is not a moment of any day, in any year, when we may not rise with Christ into newness of life, and walk in His ways with transfigured spirits. All this goes to make up the charm, the fascination, the rapture, the romance of the ministry. The third point that I would emphasize is, that we are manifestly on the eve of new applications of Christ’s leaching, which will revive the interest of the people in Christianity to a surprising degree. One of the most remarkable features in the history of Christian progress during the past few years in my own country, has been the creation of a new organization of a very simple character called "The Brotherhood Movement." It has attracted to itself hundreds of thousands of men; and the secret of its attraction is twofold. Firstly, it presents for their acceptance a very simple faith, and secondly it brings them to close quarters with certain giant social evils which we of the churches have ignored too long. It may seem to some of you incredible, but it is literally true, that it came as a revelation to multitudes of men that Christianity had anything to say about poverty more than that all good Christian people ought to be charitable to the poor. Meanwhile, the poor themselves were inscribing on their banners "Justice not Charity," and when Christianity was carefully examined the surprising discovery was made that Christ Jesus and His apostles had much to say about Righteousness and Justice, and comparatively little to say about the duty of being charitable, save as it was included in the larger ideal. The young preachers of recent years have explored the contents of the word "Righteousness," with the enthusiasm of pioneers opening up rich and fertile lands for the inheritance of the future. Something has been happening even within the academic borders of our colleges. Men have been facing life as it is, and bringing it to the light of Christ. The social economist has invaded our quiet sanctuaries of religious thought with his disturbing facts and figures; and our young men have seen visions. The new compulsion has driven them down to the over-crowded areas where the disinherited of civilization make shift to exist; and the result has been that unique personal experience which changes scientific statistics into human facts. Is any one surprised that a new note can be detected in our preaching? Does any one marvel that young prophets are flinging down their challenge to society; and that features of industrialism which have been too long accepted as inevitable are today the objects of a fiery arraignment by men who are looking at them through eyes which Christ has purged and enlightened?

We are beginning to believe things which would have appalled our ancestors. We are beginning to believe that poverty need not exist; and that the restrictions upon human life and happiness, due to poverty, may be abolished. We see in the near future an almost indefinite elevation of the standard of living; and we throw the whole authority of Christianity into the scales in favor of the two great modern ideals, that work shall be equitably remunerated, and that wealth shall be equitably distributed. course learnedly on the function of every vital nerve, vein or tissue; if his knowledge of the scientific facts of the human organism is Encyclopedic, he may, nevertheless, be as far removed from being a true prophet in his own sphere, as some dull and heavy bookman is from being a great teacher. But if your student of medicine and surgery be inspired by a noble passion for humanity; if he is ambitious to be able to keep the breadwinner well for his work, to sustain the mother in the hour of motherhood, to cherish childhood for the sake of its God-given possibilities, then he is in the way of becoming a very prophet of health, and a living exponent of the great saying of Paul that love rejoiceth in the truth. Just in the same way the mere accumulated facts as to human life may produce a scholar rather than a seer. All the social statistics ever compiled in the new sociological laboratories may only prove an incubus upon the mind, and a darkening of counsel. I have known parliaments, as well as churches, as intimidated by statistics as the ten craven-hearted spies were cowed by the walled cities of Canaan and the stature of the sons of the Anakim. There has come the ringing cry of some one with the divine genius of faith, "Let us go up against them, for we are well able to overcome them," and somehow the walls of Jericho have fallen, and impossibilities have melted away like the mists of morning. So we are beginning to see, beneath the baptism of our new Pentecost, that our vast inexorable problems, compounded of prejudices, vested interests, and ancient wrongs are by no means as impregnable as they look. But they constitute a supreme appeal to faith, and to what I may call Christian patriotism. The preacher who is going forth unto the battle field today for the kingdom of God on earth, will enter the fray to hearkening strains of music. The Church of Christ today does not despair of calling into existence a Christian civilization. It refuses to acquiesce in the permanence of those social vices and social wrongs that have entrenched themselves so deeply even under the visible authority of the Cross. There is arising an army of young knights of Christ who have taken sacramental vows, that none of their brethren shall have to live in the future under conditions that are fatal alike to physical health and to even a moderate standard of chastity and honor. They have vowed that the cruel exigencies of a merciless competition shall not always kill the truth and self-respect of those who are taken in its toils. They are resolved that the progress of humanity shall be something better and nobler than an unrelieved struggle for existence; and men something diviner than “Dragons of the prime That bare each other in their slime."

They are resolved--"highly resolved," as Lincoln used to say--that the slum and the sweater shall vanish from the face of this earth which Christ’s feet once trod, and His deathless love forever sanctifies. They are resolved that men and women shall not always be subjected to the legion of temptations that center in the gaming hell and the saloon. They are resolved that human conditions of labor and life, in the factory and on the land, shall be substituted for conditions which made health and happiness almost impossible. In other words, they have caught the glow of the idealism of the great Jewish prophets who saw in vision the Messianic age, and hailed it as the destined day of God.

I am not here to urge you to identify yourselves with any particular school of economics or politics. I am one of those who can honestly claim, that I can count the political sermons I have preached in twenty-five years on the fingers of one hand. But that has been because I have taken other and more unconventional opportunities of dealing with great national issues, as they have arisen in my own country. But I hold that that man’s soul is dead, and he is thereby incapacitated for the office of preacher, who is insensitive to the great human movements that are advancing in every land, and that have for their object the throwing wide open of the doors of opportunity to all citizens, so as to make possible for every worker a decent competence, and for every child the fullest measure of culture of which it is capable. Possibly some of the things that I am venturing to say to you, are leading me on to dangerous ground. If so, I must take the risk. This is not a plea for any special set of opinions; but it is a pleador wide and generous social sympathies, and such clear and courageous outlook as gave to the Hebrew prophets the religious leadership of their generation. My fourth point is, that over this world of military camps, bristling frontiers and armored fleets, there is being heard today with new insistence the ever-romantic strains of the angels’ song of Peace and Goodwill. The Gospel has a twofold mission. It is ours to break down the barriers between man and God, and it is ours to break down the barriers between man and man. Nobody can calculate the effect on the life of this world, if every minister of Christ were to know himself charged with full authority as an ambassador of peace, and were to make it a definite part of his mission to plead the cause of brotherhood with all other peoples. No governments could resist such concerted appeal. The Church of Christ can, if she will, make the Hague Tribunal the center of the world’s hopes. In my honest judgment, unless the Church brings this era of militarism to a close, and exorcises the demons of hated, suspicion and aggression, there is no power that can. And it is right in the line of the missionary crusade. It is but obedience to marching orders, after all. I want to appeal to you to include this definitely in your military accouterment--this fighting faith in a world subject to reason and justice because Christ-ruled. I ask you to believe that no ideal of organized Peace is too extravagant or ambitious to stand within your horizon. Today, all the dreams of science, which were discredited and derided for generations by that much overrated quality called common-sense, are coming true. The children of faith and imagination have had revealed unto them what was hidden from the sapient and prudent.

"The Heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."

Science’s predictions are coming true; science’s splendid faith is being justified. The impossible is happening before our eyes. The sages are being confounded; and, as always happens, the seers are triumphing, and the visionaries and the idealists are seen to be the supremely practical people. But we are still short sighted; at odds with the man who sees a stage further than we can. Mr. Arnold Bennett’s inventor is full of scorn for the man who is the mere slave of yesterday and who will not believe that a wooden ship must give way to an iron ship, but he is equally scornful of the heir of to-morrow who perceives that an iron ship must give way to a steel ship. But the most urgent question of our day is whether moral progress is going to keep pace with material progress.

"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising, If we wrap the globe intently with one hot electric breath, ’Twere but power within our tether, no new spirit power comprising, And in life we were not greater men nor bolder men in death."

We hail the realized hopes and dreams of science, but shall the higher science arrive with her material miracles, and is there to be nothing but defeat and despair for the higher morality? Shall Reason win the day in every sphere except where her victories would be most fruitful? Shall we erase from the canvas of the future the most glowing of all visions--the day of Humanity” When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." Who will say that man shall ride upon the wings of the wind, and talk across the empty spaces of ocean from ship to ship and from shore to shore, and yet shall not conquer the selfishness, mistrust and hatred in his own heart? Who will say that he shall vanquish every physical disease, only to be conquered by the venom of malice, envy and suspicion that poisons the veins of his own soul? No, if you do your duty, the progress in the world’s idealism shall keep pace with her advance in material prosperity; and the Church’s early ideal of internationalism shall be realized, with its glorious consequences in the deliverance of the weary nations from the burdens beneath which they groan; and the emancipation of the human spirit everywhere, from those dark shadows of mistrust and fear which have been the perpetual nightmare of the past.

I have done. It remains only for me to congratulate you on your birthright. You are born to an inheritance in a great and splendid age. All the Christian centuries offer you their hoarded wealth. For you every prophet has prophesied until now; for you the martyrs suffered, and the saints glorified God in shining lives of holy love and service. For you the poets have sung, and at your feet every one of the world-thinkers has laid the harvest of his brain. For the last hundred years Science has been weaving its wizard spells about this earth, and drawing us all nearer and nearer together, so that we may contribute what is best in our life to the common stock of the world’s wealth. Into this magnificent heritage you have been born; and into the full possession of it you are about to enter. My advice to you is, in a word, "Belong to your century." "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." To be alive here and now, with the call of God in your souls, and the widening opportunities of today at your doors, is indeed to have been crowned by Heaven. Let no man discrown you. Do not live in the past. Do not let the glamour of days and events gone by seduce you from your loyalty to the present hour. Whatever faults may be chargeable to our century, it is the best century for you and me. That is why I appeal to you with all affection and solemnity. "Today, oh, that ye would hear His voice!" The voice of God in the life of today!

I have recalled to you, in the course of these lectures, some of the memorable words and deeds of those whose names are inscribed in letters of gold on the roll of the Church’s leaders and prophets. It would have been a great thing no doubt to have run with Timothy on some errand for St. Paul. It would have been a great thing to have dared everything for Christ when Nero was on the throne. It would have been a great thing to have confronted emperors with Athanasius, to have died for freedom with Savonarola, to have crossed the Atlantic with Brewster and Bradford, to have waked the world to new spiritual life with Whitefield and Wesley. But let no man say that our age is inferior in opportunity to any that has gone before. The one demand is the consecrated spirit, and the forward mind.

It will belong to your ministry to conserve for the men and women of today the eternal truths in which our fathers lived, but to present those truths as they have passed through the living mind and been shined upon by the broadening light, that is the precious gift of God to our generation. I think perhaps this ministry of yours can be best realized from that description of the conversation between the prophet Brand and his wife Agnes, that we owe to the genius of Ibsen.

Brand says:

"Oftentimes my light is low, Dim my reason, dull my thought, And there seems a kind of gladness In immeasurable sad hess. In such hours as these I see God, as at no other, near;

Oh, so near, it seems to me I could speak and He would heat.

Like a lost child then I long To be folded to His heart, And be gathered by His strong Tender Father-arms to rest." And Agnes says:

"Brand, oh see Him so always! To thy supplication near God of love and not of fear." But Brand replies:

"No, I may not bar His way, Nor run counter to my call;

I must see Him, vast, sublime As the Heavens,--a pigmy Time, Needs a giant God withal!"

"Oh! but thou mayst see Him near, See Him as a Father dear, Bow thy head upon His breast, There, when thou art weary, rest, Then, return, with face aglow From His presence, fair and free, Bear His glory down to me Worn with battle-thrust and throe!"

It is given, I think, to the prophet of today to combine a great sense of God’s majesty     and might with an equal sense of His nearness and fathomless love. The mighty God is the Everlasting Father, and we must preach the Gospel so. As Browning says:

"I who saw Power see now Love perfect too!"

There is no more to be said. Let us have courage. Our mission is to inspire men; and in Christ is inexhaustible inspiration; and revelation that is always new. In Mr. Henry James’ masterpiece "Roderick Hudson," there is the clever successful artist Gloriani, who has sold his soul to make money, and grown cynical as to the transaction. He thinks the true inspiration of genius is but a fickle thing, and few if any can afford to pay the price. "My dear fellow," he says to the real artist who is suffering from temporary eclipse of faith, "passion burns out, inspiration runs to seed. Some fine day every artist finds himself sitting face to face with his lump of clay, with his empty canvas, with his sheet of blank paper, waiting in vain for the revelation to be made, for the Muse to descend. He must learn to do without the Muse. When the fickle jade forgets her way to your studio don’t waste any time in tearing your hair and meditating suicide. Come round and see me, and I will show you how to console yourself."

Many has been the minister who has thought and felt like that. He sees himself sitting before a blank sheet of paper, waiting in vain for the sermon that will not come. He thinks that, if not now, yet a score of years on, his inspiration may have "run to seed." What is he to do? Is he "to learn to do without the Muse"? Is he to "console himself" by some lower ideal and come to regard himself as a hireling, and to look upon his work as a profession and a livelihood? God forbid. We cannot do without the spirit—without the inspiration. Without that mystic light and power, our art is indeed barren and contemptible. But, remember, our inspiration includes all others. Nature, Poetry, Art, Literature, Life — we have the freedom of all the schools. And above and beyond all others, we have the school of Christ. No minister shall ever be bankrupt of a message who is living in that Society. The jaded brain may sometimes refuse its office. We may feel some Sunday evening as if we had fired our last shot. But there is still for the child of faith a cruse of oil and a barrel of meal, that mystically do not fail. The miracle of our calling is that they who wait upon the Lord renew their strength. We may not always mount up on wings as eagles, nor is it well we should. But by the grace of God vouchsafed to us we can run and not be weary; we can walk—briskly, one hopes!—and not faint. In the splendid certainty of inspiration which is the gift of a God whose gifts are "without repentance," may you accept your ministry at your Master’s hands; and living in the dignity and the glory of it, serve your generation, by the will of God, before you fall asleep!