03.03. The Preacher's Themes

LECTURE III THE PREACHER’S THEMES "Feed my sheep"

I am to speak to you to-day on the preacher’s themes, and I have ventured to attach to the title the words of our Master, spoken to Simon Peter,--" Feed my sheep." I do not forget the particular conditions in which the counsel was born, but I believe that, without doing it any violence, it has immediate significance for our present meditation. The words are descriptive of a pastoral relationship, a shepherd caring for the needs of his flock. The shepherd is to lead his sheep from the barrenness of the wilderness, or from patches where the herbage is scanty and unsatisfying, to "green pastures" and "still waters." He is to watch against famine and drought. He is to" feed" his sheep, to "satisfy their mouth with good things." And ours, too, is the pastoral relationship. A flock is committed to our care. There are manifold duties connected with the office, but we are just now concerned with the primary responsibility of defending our sheep against the perils of hunger. To us is entrusted the solemn duty of finding food. The sheep are largely dependent upon their shepherds for the riches or poverty of their provisions. We are to provide against starvation, or against that semi-starvation which arises from innutritious herbage, and which results in weakness, anemia, disease. We have the choice of the pastures. Where shall we choose? To drop my metaphor, you and I are accounted responsible, by our very vocation, for the feeding of immortal souls. They will look to us for spiritual food. We are appointed to bring them satisfaction, to provide them with strong and wholesome nutriment by which they shall be competent to carry their daily burden, and to engage in life’s battles without faintness or exhaustion. That is what you men are going out into the world to do. You are to be guardians of the church’s health by providing against moral and spiritual famine. You are to see to it that bread is at hand by which the soul can be "restored." When men and women come to your spiritual table, with aching cravings and desires, they are to find such provision as shall send them away with the words of the Psalmist upon their lips: "He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness ’,; "We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple!"

Now what shall we give them? What is our conception of bread? To what aspects of truth shall we lead the souls of men? What shall be the marrow of our preaching? What shall be our themes? To what claimant needs shall we address ourselves? "Life," says a very wise observer, "grows more and more severe. Pain becomes more inward. Grief and strain advance along with physical security and comfort. Civilization only internalizes the trouble. We have fewer wounds but more weariness. We are better cared for but we have more care. There is less agony, perhaps, but perhaps also, more misery." What "bread of life" shall we bring to lives so burdened and stricken? What shall we preach?

I suppose it will be the common judgment that in many quarters a great change has taken place in the character of pulpit themes, and in the treatment of them. Subjects are introduced to-day which would never have been considered even a generation ago. In many instances the subjects are not so much themes, in the sense of the presentation of great truths, but "topics," the consideration of some passing crisis, or of some local combination of circumstances, or of some incident which is exciting the attention of the daily press. Many reasons are given to account for this change. In the first place it is said to be explained by a broader and healthier conception of the preacher’s mission. We are told that it should be a preacher’s ambition not only to have "a spirit of wisdom," but also "a spirit of understanding," not merely knowledge of principles, but a skill in their practical application. He must be more than seer, he must be architect: he must be more than architect, he must be artisan. His preaching must do more than indicate ideal and goal, it must prepare the way by which the goal is reached. The preacher must be more than "a light to my path," he must be "a lamp unto my feet." All of which means that the preacher must be more than an idealist, more than a theologian, more than an evangelist: he must busy himself in the realms of political and social economics.

I have personally nothing to say in disparagement of these momentous ministries, and I deeply honor the men who are engaged in them. I very gratefully recognize the peculiarly special gifts and vision in which some men find their equipment and calling to this particular form of service. With equal readiness and gratitude I recognize the part which some men have played in the illumination of social ideals, in the disentanglement of social complexities, and in the inspiration of social service. But with all this you will permit me to express my own conviction as to the perils which beset a preacher in themes and ministries like these. I am in no doubt of my position as a citizen, and of my duties and privileges in the life of the nation. I must not be an alien to the commonwealth, living remote and aloof from its travails and throes. My strength must be enlisted in the vital, actual forces which, through tremendous obstacles, are seeking the enthronement of justice and truth. I can also conceive it probable that critical occasions may arise when it will be the duty of the pulpit to speak with clarion distinctness on the policy of the state or nation. But even with these admissions I can clearly see this danger, that the broadening conception of the preacher’s mission may lead to the emphasis of the Old Testament message of reform rather than to the New Testament message of redemption. Men may become so absorbed in social wrongs as to miss the deeper malady of personal sin. They may lift the rod of oppression and leave the burden of guilt. They may seek to correct social dislocations and overlook the awful disorder of the soul. It seems to me that some preachers have made up their minds to live in the Old Testament rather than in the New, and to walk with the prophet rather than with the apostle and evangelist. Amazing differences are determined by a man’s choice of central home; whether, say, he shall dwell in the gospel of John or in the Book of Amos, whether, say, in the wonderful realms of the epistle to the Ephesians, or in the smaller world of Isaiah or Jeremiah. It is all a matter of center, of dwelling-place, of settled home. Where does a preacher live? From what place do his journeyings begin? To what bourn do his journeyings return? These are the central tests, and my observation leads me to think that the broader conception of the preacher’s mission sometimes tends to lure him away to the circumference and suburbs of life, and to partially efface the vital, tremendous verities of redeeming grace. In the fascinating breadth we may lose centrality: things that are secondary and subordinate may take the throne.

Let me not be misunderstood. While I write these words I carry in my mind the memory of Dr. Dale, and the character of his life and ministry. Now Dale was a great politician, he was an intimate friend and fellow laborer of Gladstone and Bright and Chamberlain. lie burned with the passion of righteousness, lie entered deeply into social, educational, and political questions, and he flung himself with stern enthusiasm into every campaign for the rectification of crooked conditions, for the widening of the bounds of freedom, and for the enrichment of the general life of the nation. Yes, Dale was a great politician, but he was a greater preacher, and the themes of his pulpit were vaster and more fundamental than those he dealt with on the platform. Was ever a pulpit devoted to mightier themes than when Dale filled it! Turn to his book on "The Atonement ": every chapter went through his pulpit! Take his incomparable work on Ephesians: it was all preached in his pulpit! Or look at his maturest work, the great book on" Christian Doctrine ": every word of it was given to his people through the pulpit! “I hear that you are preaching doctrinal sermons to the congregation at Carrs Lane," a fellow-minister said to him one day: "they will not stand it." Dale replied, "They will have to stand it," and throughout his long and noble ministry they not only stood it, but welcomed it, and rejoiced in it, and were nourished for the splendid service which that church has always rendered to the cause of civil and religious liberty. At the very time when he was foremost as a politician his pulpit was dealing with the awful yet glorious mysteries of redeeming grace. Dale’s home was not among the prophets but among the apostles and evangelists, lie visited Isaiah, but he lived with Paul. Nay, he dwelt "in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," and it was the glories of that lofty relationship, which he had obtained by grace, and at which he never ceased to wonder, that he sought to unveil Sunday by Sunday to his waiting people. His pulpit was reserved for vital and central themes: he never allowed the calls of wider citizenship to snare him from his throne.

There is another peril which I will name. The sense of scriptural truth is very delicate and it can be easily impaired. Every preacher knows how sensitive is the organ of spiritual perception, and how vigilantly it has to be guarded if he is to retain his vision and apprehension of "the deeper things" of God. You will find in your ministry that an evil temper can make you blind. You will find that jealousy can scale your eyes until the heavens give no light. You will find that paltry temper raises an earth-born cloud between you and the hills of God. You will find when you enter your study that your moral and spiritual condition demands your first attention. I have sat down to the preparation of my sermon and the heavens have been as brass! I have turned to the gospel of John and it has been as a wilderness, without verdure or dew! Yes, you will find that when your spirit is impaired, your Bible, and your lexicons, and your commentaries are only like so many spectacles behind which there are no eyes: you have no sight!

All this you will probably grant when our attention is confined to the influence of deliberate sin upon spiritual vision. But I would ask you to consider whether the spiritual organ of the preacher may not be bruised if he is enticed to give the burden of his attention to secondary discussion and controversies, to matters which have certainly not first rank in the interests of the soul. I believe it is possible for the sociologist to impair the evangelist in the preacher, and that a man can lose his power to unveil and display "the unsearchable riches of Christ." Gentlemen, this fear is not the creation of the fancy. I have heard men make the confession that they have acquired a passion and aptitude for certain types of preaching, and they have lost the power to expound those deepest matters which absorbingly engaged the heart and brain of the Apostle Patti. When the preacher becomes economist there are men outside who can surpass him in his office. His influence in these secondary realms is comparatively small. His legitimate and unshared throne is elsewhere and among other themes. It is for him to keep a clean, clear, true insight into the things that matter most, to explore the wonderful love of God, to delve and mine in the treasures of redemption, "to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." But a second reason is given why the themes of the pulpit should be more widely varied than those of a past generation. We are told that there is a tragic lapse of interest in the Church. The Church is now surrounded by a multiplicity of conflicting or competing interests. Modern life has put on brighter colors: it has become more garish, more arresting, more mesmeric. Society has become more enticing, and lures of pleasure abound on every side. And all this is making the Church seem very grey and somber, and her slow, old-fashioned ways appear like a "one-horse shay" amid the bright, swift times of automobile and airplane! And therefore the Church must "hurry up" and make her services more pleasant and savory. Her themes must be "up-to-date." They must be "live" subjects for "live" men! They must be even a little sensational if they are to catch the interest of men who live in the thick of sensations from day to day.

I can quite understand men who take this position, and I think they offer certain reasonable counsels which it will be our wisdom to heed. But on the other hand I think the road is beset with perils which we must heed with equal vigilance. The Apostle Paul recognized changing assortments of circumstances, and he resolved upon a certain elasticity, and he became "all things to all men" that he might "save some." But in all the elasticity of his relations he never changed his themes. He moved amid the garishness of Ephesus, and Corinth, and Rome, but he never borrowed the artificial splendor of his surroundings and thereby eclipsed the Cross. No "way of the world" seduced him from his central themes. Wherever he went, whether to a little prayer-meeting by the river-side in Philippi, or amid the aggressive, sensational glare of Ephesus or Corinth, he "determined to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." And I am persuaded that amid all the changed Conditions of our day--the social upheavals, the race for wealth, the quest of pleasure, we shall gain nothing by hugging the subordinate, or by paying any homage to the flippancy and frivolity of the time. The Church is in perilous ways when she begins to borrow the sensational notes of the passing hour. One of the clearest and wisest counselors of our time, a man who knew the secrets of men because he dwelt in "the secret place of the Most High," gave this straight counsel to the ministry a little while ago: "Against religious sensationalism, outré sayings, startling advertisements, profane words, irreverent prayers, the younger ministry must make an unflinching stand, for the sake of the Church and the world, for the sake of their profession and themselves." I do not think these words describe an imaginary peril. The peril is already at our gates; in some quarters it has been an actual menace to our worship, and here and there the menace has become a "destruction that wasteth at noonday." There is a certain reserved and reticent dignity which will always be an essential dement in our power among men. We never reach the innermost room in any man’s soul by the expediencies of the showman or the buffoon. The way of irreverence will never bring us to the holy place. Let us be as familiar as you please, but let it be the familiarity of simplicity, the simplicity which clothes itself in all things natural, chaste, and refined. And I think if we were to exercise ourselves upon things supremely beautiful we should find that we had hit upon the supremely sensational, and that the out-of-the-way themes, the glaring titles, the loud advertisements, are undesirable ministers in the quest and cure of souls.

What are the needs of the people who face us in the pews? In their innermost souls what do they crave? Are they hungering for the rediscussion of newspaper topics, with only the added flavor of the sanction of the sanctuary? Shall the preacher be just a visible editor, presenting his message amid the solemn inspirations of prayer and praise? What is the apostolic guidance in the matter? When I turn to apostolic witness and preaching I am growingly amazed at the fulness and glory of the message. There is a range about it, aha a vastness, and a radiance, and a color which have been the growing astonishment of my latter years. When I turn to it I feel as though I am in Alpine country; majestic heights with tracts of virgin snow; suggestions of untraversed depths with most significant silence; mighty rivers full and brimming all the year round; fields of exquisite flowers nestling beneath the protecting care of precipitous grandeur; fruit-trees on the lower slopes, each bearing its fruit in its season; the song of birds; the moving air; the awful tempest. Turn to one of Paul’s epistles, and you will experience this sense of air, and space, and height, and grandeur. Turn to Ephesians, or Colossians, or Romans, and you feet at once you are not in some little hill-country, and still less on some unimpressive and monotonous plain, you are in mountainous country, awful, arresting, and yet also fascinating, companionable, intimate. In Ephesians you lift your wondering eyes upon the ineffable Glory, but you also wander by rivers of grace, and you walk in paths of light, and you gather "the fruits of the Spirit" from the tree that grows by the way. I say it is this vastness, this manifold glory of apostolic preaching which more and more allures me, and more and more overwhelms me as the years of my ministry go by. There is something here to awaken the wonder of men, to lead them into holy awe, to brace their spirits, to expand their minds, and to immeasurably enlarge their thought and life. And what is true of apostolic preaching has been true of all great preaching down to this very hour. Take Thomas Boston. We are told that his language was "tasked and strained to the utmost, to admeasure and to understand," when he spoke of "those redemptive blessings which meet all men’s necessities . . . ’the full and irrevocable forgiveness of sins; reinstatement in the divine favor and friendship; the gift of the Holy Spirit in his enlightening, purifying, and peace-giving influences, turning men into living temples of the living God; victory in death and over death; the reception of the soul at death into the Father’s house, and the beatific vision of God." These were the themes of transcendent interest which enriched and glorified the preaching of Thomas Boston, and which made it so mighty a power for the highest good that there was scarcely a cottage home in all Ettriek in which some of his converts could not be found. Or take Spurgeon. You may not like his theology. You may resent some of the phraseology in which his theology is enshrined. But I tell you that, with Spurgeon’s preaching as your guide, your movements are not limited to some formal exercise on a barren asphalt area, or confined to the limits of some small backyard. Hear him on the love of God, on the grace of Christ Jesus, on the communion of the Holy Ghost. Hear him on such texts as "Accepted in the Beloved," "The Glory of His Grace," "The Forgiveness of Sins," "The Holy Spirit of Promise," "The Exceeding Greatness of His Power to Usward Who Believe "--hear him on themes like these, and you have a sense of vastness kindred to that which awes you when you listen to the Apostle Patti. Every apparently simple division in the sermon is like the turning of the telescope to some new galaxy of luminous wonders in the unfathomable sky. Or take Newman. What was it that held the cultured crowds in St. Mary’s enthralled in almost painful silence? I know there was the supreme genius of the preacher. There was also that mysterious fascination which always attaches to the mystic and the ascetic, to those who are most evidently detached from the jostling and heated interests of the world. But above and beyond these there was the vastness and the inwardness of the themes with which he dealt. His hearers were constrained from the study to the sanctuary, from the market-place to the holy place, even to "the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." The very titles of his sermons tell us where he dwelt: "Saving Knowledge," "The Quickening Spirit," "The Humiliation of the Eternal Son," "Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness," "Christ Manifested in Remembrance,’’ "The Glory of God." The very recital of the themes enlarges the mind, and induces that sacred fear which is "the beginning of wisdom." The preacher was always moving in a vast world, the solemn greatness of life was continually upon him, and there was ever the call of the Infinite even in the practical counsel concerning the duty of the immediate day.

I say this has been the mood and the manner of all great and effective preaching. It was even so with the mighty preaching of Thomas Binney. "He seemed," says one who knew him well, "to look at the horizon rather than at an enclosed field, or a local landscape. He had a marvelous way of connecting every subject with eternity past and with eternity to come." Yes, and that was Pauline and apostolic. It was as though you were looking at a bit of carved wood in a Swiss village window, and you lifted your eyes and saw the forest where the wood was nourished, and, higher still, the everlasting snows! Yes, that was Binney’s way, Dale’s way, the way of Bushnell, and Newman, and Spurgeon--they were always willing to stop at the village window, but they always linked the streets with the heights, and sent your souls a-roaming over the eternal hills of God. And this it is which always impresses me, and impresses me more and more the solemn spaciousness of their themes, the glory of their unveilings, their wrestling with language to make the glory known, the voice of the Eternal in their practical appeals; and this it is which so profoundly moved their hearers to "wonder, love, and praise."

Well now, is our preaching to-day characterized by this apostolic vastness of theme, this unfolding of arresting spiritual wealth and glory? I ask these questions not that we may register a hasty and careless verdict, but to suggest a serious and personal inquiry. Dr. Gore, the Bishop of Oxford, has been recently telling us what he thinks is the perilous tendency of the ministers and teachers of the Protestant religion. He declares that we are seeking refuge from the difficulties of thought in the opportunities of action. That is a very serious suggestion. It would mean that we are intensely busy in the little village shop, and have no vision of the pine forests, or of the august splendors of the everlasting hills. And it would mean something more than this. We are not going to enrich our action by the impoverishment of our thought. A skimmed theology will not produce a more intimate philanthropy. We are not going to become more ardent lovers of men by the cooling of our love for God. You cannot drop the big themes and create great saints. But altogether apart from what Dr. Gore thinks of our preaching, what do we think of it ourselves? In the light of the example of the Apostle Paul, of his teaching and preaching, and by the example of the other great preachers I have named, how does it fare with our familiar themes? Are they always in the village shop, or is there always a suggestion of the mountains about them? Are they thin, and small, and of the dwarfed variety? Can our language very easily say all that we have got to say, or does it fail to carry the glory we would fain express? Is it not true that our language is often too big for our thought, and our thought is like a spoonful of sad wine rattling about in a very ornate and distinguished bottle? Men may admire the bottle, but they find no inspiration in the wine. Yes, men admire, but they do not revere; they appreciate, but they do not repent; they are interested, but they are not exalted. They say, "What a fine sermon!" not, "What a great God!" They say, "What a ready speaker!" and not, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

It is this note of vastitude, this ever-present sense and suggestion of the Infinite, which I think we need to recover in our modern preaching. Even when we are dealing with what we sometimes unfortunately distinguish as "practical" duties we need to emphasize their footage in the eternal. It is at the gravest peril that we dissociate theology and ethics, and separate the thought of duty to men from the thought of its relation to God. When the Apostle Paul, in the twelfth chapter of Romans, begins to be hortatory, preceptive, practical, it is because he has already prepared the rich bed in which these strong and winsome graces may be grown. Every precept in the twelfth chapter sends its roots right down through all the previous chapters, through the rich, fat soil of sanctification and justification, and the mysterious energies of redeeming grace. We employ a universe to rear a lily-of-the-valley. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to rear a fruit of the Spirit. We require evangelical grace if we would create evangelical patience. We require "the truth as it is in Jesus" if we would furnish even a truly courteous life. Ruskin says that if you were to cut a square inch out of any of Turner’s skies you would find the infinite in it. And it ought to be that if men were to take only a square inch out of any of our preaching, they would find a suggestion which would lead them to "the throne of God and of the Lamb."

All this means that we must preach upon the great texts of the Scriptures, the fat texts, the tremendous passages whose vastness almost terrify us as we approach them. We may feel that we are but pigmies in the stupendous task, but in these matters it is often better to lose ourselves in the immeasurable than to always confine our little boat to the measurable creeks along the shore. Yes, we must grapple with the big things, the things about which our people will hear nowhere else; the deep, the abiding, the things that permanently matter. We are not appointed merely to give good advice, but to proclaim good news. Therefore must the apostolic themes be our themes: The holiness of God; the love of God; the grace of the Lord Jesus; the solemn wonders of the cross; the ministry of the Divine forgiveness; the fellowship of His sufferings; the power of the Resurrection; the blessedness of divine communion; the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; the mystical indwelling of the Holy Ghost; the abolition of the deadliness of death; the ageless life; our Father’s house; the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Themes like these are to be our power and distinction. "0 thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain. O thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusalem, lift up thy voice with strength: lift it up: be not afraid: say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!"

If such is to be the weighty matter of our preaching, we surely ought to be most seriously careful how we proclaim it. The matter may be bruised and spoiled by the manner. The work of grace may be marred by our own ungraciousness. We may fail to grip and hold because of our inconsiderate clumsiness. There are certain things which it is necessary to avoid if we would give even great themes directness and wing. First of all, we must avoid a cold officialism. There is nothing more uncongenial to me, as I move about amid the venerable stones and the subduing presence’s of Westminster Abbey, than to hear the cold, heartless, wonderless recitals of the official guides. Yes, there is one thing more uncongenial still, to hear the great evangel of redeeming love recited with the metallic apathy of a gramophone, with the cold remoteness of an unappreciative machine. And that is our peril. The world is tired of the mere official and is hungry for the living man. It wants more than a talker, it seeks the prophet. It wants more than a sign-post, it seeks a Greatheart who knows the ways of Zion, who has found them in the travail of his own soul, and who exults in their fountains and flowers, and in all their exquisite delights. The mere official spectralizes the grandest themes, he offers men a phantom deliverance and a phantom feast.

"I’ve been to church," says Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his letters, "I’ve been to church, and I am not depressed!" Walk down the suggestive lane of that phrase, and ponder its significance. "I once heard a preacher," says Emerson in a familiar passage, "who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more. A snowstorm was falling around us. The snowstorm was real; the preacher merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned." Yes, he was a mere official, wrenched from the innermost vitalities of his office. If he had ever had "the vision splendid," it had faded from his heaven, and no longer inspired his soul with light and flame. His words were only words, they were not spirit and life; he dwelt in the outermost courts of the temple, near to all the other traffickers in holy things--he was not a servant of the holy place, not a living priest of the living God. And his peril is our peril, subtle and insistent, the peril of remoteness from central issues, the peril of making substances appear shadows, and of making the holy splendors of grace seem like immaterial dreams. And, therefore, may we not fitly add to our private devotional liturgy an extra intercession, and may it not be this: "From all cold officialism of mind and heart; from the deadliness of custom and routine; from worldliness in which there is no spirit, and from ministry in which there is no life; from all formality, unreality, and pretence, good Lord, deliver us!" And there is a second temptation which, if we yield to it, will impair the efficiency of even mighty themes, the peril of dictatorialism. I am not suggesting that we are to affect a limp in our preaching, and that we are to proclaim the word with trembling hesitancy and indecision. But there is a world of difference between the authoritative and the dictatorial. In these realms the authoritative messenger is clothed with humility, the dictatorial messenger is clothed with subtle pride. One walks on stilts, the other "walks in the fear of the Lord." The dictatorial is self-raised, the authoritative comes "from above." And, therefore, the authoritative carries an atmosphere as well as a message, it has grace as well as truth. The dictatorial may have the form of truth, but it does not carry the fragrance of the King’s garden; it lacks the grace of the Lord Jesus. Now, I am perfectly sure that here we find one reason why our ministry is often so ineffective we confuse the dictatorial with the authoritative, plainness with impressiveness, "straight speaking" with "speaking with tongues" as the Spirit gives us utterance. We "call a spade a spade," and think we have spoken the truth. And so we dictate, but we don’t persuade; we point the way, but few pilgrims take the road.

Look at the oppressive presence of sin. We may deal with it authoritatively or dictatorially. The weight of our speech may be derived from the tiny elevation of our office, or from the sublime heights of the "heavenly places in Christ Jesus." If we speak dictatorially we shall be only combatants: if we speak authoritatively we shall be saviors. If we are only dictatorial we shall speak with severity; if we are authoritative we shall speak with medicated severity, and men and women will begin to expose their poisoned wounds to our healing ministry. If we are only dictatorial our speech will have the aloofness of a prescription; if we are authoritative we shall have the immediacy of a surgeon engaged in the work of practical salvation. Or take the dark and ubiquitous presence of sorrow. I have been greatly impressed in recent years by one refrain which I have found running through many biographies. Dr. Parker repeated again and again, "Preach to broken hearts!" And here is the testimony of Ian Maclaren: "The chief end of preaching is comfort. ... Never can I forget what a distinguished scholar, who used to sit in my church, once said to me: ’Your best work in the pulpit has been to put heart into men for the coming week!" And may I bring you an almost bleeding passage from Dr. Dale: "People want to be comforted .... They need consolation--really need it, and do not merely long for it. I came to that conclusion some years ago, but have never been able to amend my ways as I wish. I try, and sometimes have a partial success: but the success is only partial. Four or five months ago I preached a sermon on ’Rest in the Lord,’ and began to think I had found the track: but if I did I lost it again. Last Sunday week I preached on ’As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.’ That, I think, was still nearer to the right thing; but I cannot keep it up."

Brethren, if these men felt this need of the people, and also felt the difficulty of bringing their ministry to bear upon it, how is it with you and me? One thing is perfectly clear, the merely dictatorial will never heal the broken in heart, or bind up their bleeding wounds. Our power will not be found in our official rank, or in the respect paid to our vocation. Our power will be found in our authority, mysterious yet most real, an authority which is not the perquisite of human dignity or reward. We shall have to go to "the throne of God and of the Lamb," we shall have to tread the way which runs by the mystical river; we shall have to pluck the leaves of the tree which are for "the healing of the nations "; and with the exquisite tenderness of grace lay these leaves upon the wounds and the sorrows of our afflicted race. And for all this tremendous but privileged task, which I have sought to outline in this lecture, the presentation of great themes in a great way, ministering to the sin, and sorrow, and weakness of the world, we have the abundant resources of a bountiful God. We have "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost "; and with these as our allies God’s statutes will become our songs.