have done more to influence the destinies of
men than have a hundred such men as Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. Four
hundred millions of Chinese, in half the actions which go to make up
their lives, are now governed by maxims and opinions which have come
down to them from remote antiquity, from a man whose very existence is
almost a myth. Those military heroes whose influence on society has been
permanent have been propagandists as well as warriors. Opinions and
codes have gone with, and survived, their conquering armies. The armies
of the elder Napoleon were routed at Waterloo. But the Napoleonic ideas
survived the shock, and they are at this day a part of the governing
power of the world. It was the Koran--the words, and the creed of
Mahomet--that gave to the Mahometan conquest its permanent hold upon the
nations.

Spoken words have in themselves greater power than merely written ones.
There is a wonderful influence in the living voice to give force and
emphasis to what is uttered. But the written word remains. What is lost
in immediate effect, is more than gained in the permanent result. The
successful writer has an audience for all time. He being dead still
speaks. Men are speaking now, who have gone to their final account
twenty centuries ago. Paul possibly may not have had the same influence
with a popular assembly as the more eloquent Apollos. But Paul is
speaking still through his ever-living Epistles. He is speaking daily to
more than a hundred millions of human beings. He is exerting through his
writings a power incomparably greater than that even which he exercised
as a living speaker.

All men have not the commanding gifts of the apostle Paul. Yet after
all, the main difference between ordinary men and men of the Pauline
stamp, is not so much in their natural powers, as in the spirit and
temper of the men, in that entire consecration to the service of Christ
which Paul had, and which they have not. It is wonderful to see how much
may be accomplished even by men of ordinary talents, when they have that
zeal and single-mindedness which may be attained by one as well as by
another. We are accountable for the talents which we have, not for what
we have not. But let each man see to it that he uses to the utmost every
talent which his Lord has committed to his trust.

How much, for instance, may be accomplished by a man who has a gift for
addressing a popular assembly! Such a man by a few wise words, spoken at
the