lways a failure. The worst of it is that in our effort
to be another we have ceased to be ourselves, and after such a loss
what do we still possess? Perhaps the disaster comes in another way.
Conventionality has certain curious notions about the pulpit, the
fulfilment of which it paradoxically despises as it demands it. The
preacher is expected to speak in a different voice and wear a different
expression in the "sacred desk" from his voice and expression in other
places. In some churches he is expected to read the Bible in a
strange, archaic sort of way, pronouncing the words which appear upon
its pages with a pronunciation never employed under any other
circumstances. The newspaper is _read_, the psalms are _intoned_. It
is a crime to be natural. All the time men are sick of the whole
fabric of artificiality, and long for that touch of nature which makes
the whole world kin.

Another way of losing individuality is to allow oneself to be drowned
in officialism, buried beneath its trappings, interred in its
dignities. Many a man spends his life in a futile attempt to live up
to some official tradition, even as he might pass his time in a family
picture gallery cultivating the expression of some ancestral portrait
on the wall. There is also to be remembered the possibility of a
slavery to books. There is such a thing as the spell exercised by a
great author through the printed page. We heard the other day of a
contemporary literary man who is understood to pose as a second edition
of William Shakespeare on the strength of some asserted resemblance to
a bust of the poet. Certainly it cannot be on the strength of any
intellectual inheritance. We could name men who have preached in a
thousand times more pulpits than they have ever seen through the lips
of others whom they have subdued to bondage by some famous volume. We
could name the books if we cared to do so. Perhaps we could recall
periods in our own life when such a spell cast its glamour over us.

To resist all these influences successfully, or, rather, to so
appropriate what is good and helpful in them, which it is our duty to
do, and still remain a full blooded, virile individual, will require
resolution. To give due meed of homage to the great, due
recognition--and there is a certain recognition due--to the conventions
of our church life--to realise the office of the preacher, to
assimilate the book, to grind and polish one's gifts--to do all this