carried by other hands than his who found the wells of illuminating
oil. It needs genius to make discoveries and often quite other genius
to apply them. "He is a preacher to preachers," was said of one, and
said truly, as many hearers could testify. But this "preacher to
preachers," as a preacher _to the people_, failed!

And the misfortune is that often, alas! it comes to pass that just such
men as these do make the attempt to guide men through a world of which
they, the preachers, know nothing. To change the figure, they make the
attempt to treat by means of remedies which they have studied a little,
patients whom they have not studied at all, and of whose condition,
habits, history and surroundings they know next to nothing. There is
much of this kind of doctoring and what is the result of it? What but
the oft-repeated criticism that the sermon had small practical
application to the every-day side of things? It answered no present
questions, though it did, perhaps, throw light upon some period of
Jewish history. It solved no present problems, though it _did_ contain
an interesting exegesis of a much discussed passage. It dealt with no
present difficulties, though it did suggest an entertaining theory as
to the authorship of such and such a psalm. It opened out no heart
before its own vision. It neither created nor deepened nor satisfied a
single desire. It might as well have been a disquisition on the fate
of the lost ten tribes of Israel, or a treatise on the properties of
the differential calculus, or a discussion of the politics of the
planet Mars for any application it had to the need of any one person,
young or old, in the congregation sitting there and providing that
example of patience which was the most edifying feature of the
occasion. It was eloquent, learned, poetic, profound, but _it was not
life_. It is because there is so much of this kind of preaching that
it has come to be said that the pulpit is out of touch with the needs
of men; that it is too otherworldly, and that it displays a knowledge
of everything but the necessities it pretends to meet. The criticism
may be exaggerated and unjust, but the contention it is meant to
enforce is true. Preaching must be _life_. Preaching can only be life
when the preacher has understanding!

Understanding of what? Of the human creature to be preached to and by
preaching saved, ennobled and led up, through almost infinite
opposition, to a glorio