tinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition
of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the
greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has
touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and
toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching
has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in
the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the
overpowering force of the dramatic instincts when limited to their most
vulgar conditions. My submission is, that a properly-conducted stage
might be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance upon this
submission, and contend that the function of the preacher is infinitely
superior to the function of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say
that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes to be a Divine and
authoritative origin. I hold the great preacher to be a spiritual
medium. In his next evolution he will simply tell the people whatever
may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that
indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no
messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By
learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will
prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory
of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art
preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have
brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for
the messenger in whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance
of divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to
admit that the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the
poverty of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.

* * * * *

THAT BEAST BEAUTY.

BY KIRBY HARE.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.

I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the death
of my father, happened three months before I came into the world. When I
did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of disgust, a fresh
misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join my father, lea