the serviceable intellect at college, but it is the
latter which makes the preacher. There may, indeed, here and there, be
miraculous professors who attach more importance, and give higher
marks, to the indications of the creative intellect than to the
achievements of the receptive intellect. But few can resist the appeal
made by the clear, correct and copious reproduction of what they have
themselves supplied. Indeed, they would not, as a rule, be justified
in doing so; for the first indications of originality are often crude
and irritating, and they may come to nothing. The creative intellect
is frequently slow in maturing; it is like those seeds which take more
than one season to blossom. But at a flower show it would not be fair
to withhold the prize from the flower which has blossomed already, and
reserve it for one which may possibly do so next year.

Of my fellow-students in the class to which I belonged at college, the
two who have since been most successful did not then seem destined for
first places. They were known to be able men, but they were not
excessively laborious, and they kept themselves irritatingly detached
from the interests of the college. But the one has since unfolded a
remarkable originality, which was, no doubt, even then organizing
itself in the inner depths; and the other, as soon as he entered the
pulpit, turned out to have the power of casting a spell over the minds
of men. Both had a spark of nature's fire; and this is the possession
which outshines all others when college is over and practical life
begun.[1]

But, if the viewpoint of practical life is different even from the
professorial, it is still more different from that of students; and
this may again justify the bringing of a message from the outside
world. The difference might be put in many ways; but perhaps it may be
best expressed by saying that, while you are among the critics, we are
among the criticized.

In the history of nearly all minds of the better sort there is an
epoch of criticism. The young soul, as it begins to observe, discovers
that things around it are not all as they ought to be, and that the
world is not so perfect a place as might naturally be expected or as
it may have been represented to be. The critical faculty awakes and,
having once tasted blood, rushes forth to judge all men and things
with cruel ability. This is the stage at which we agree with Carlyle
in thinking mankind to be mostly fools and pro