gnificance and lesson of it all. Imagine
the scene: the listening multitude crowded into the spacious entrance
hall; the preacher, wearied and worn by disease, and still more by his
restless and sublime labours in preaching the word in field and temple
for many a wondrous year. The candle flickers and fails as the
glorious voice, which has made heavenly music for tens of thousands of
seeking souls, becomes weaker and weaker. The feeble flame, at last
goes out, and leaves the preacher still pleading the cause of the Lord,
whose face he is so soon to behold. History has no nobler scene to
show in all its gathered years!

We have appropriated this story because it appears to us to hold an
explanation of the meaning of the word at the head of this chapter.
Possibly there has never been, in all the years of the Church, a
greater preacher than this same Whitefield, and Whitefield's greatness
has, to a large extent, its explanation in this, the last scene of his
ministry. How many he led to God eternity alone can reveal. His
spiritual descendants are numbered by multitudes as the sand on the
sea-shore, the stars in the firmament, for number. When he died
millions in both the old world and the new wept the going of one who to
them had been the prophet of a great deliverance. To this day the
little New England village where he sleeps is the object of pious
pilgrimage to numbers to whom the echo of his voice still comes across
the breadth of intervening years. The secret is largely hidden in
"this last scene of all." In this mighty _passion_ to preach the word,
a passion which neither persecution nor betrayal nor disappointment nor
disease nor even the icy breath of approaching death could cool--in
this lies the explanation of a ministry that shook the world!

And without this passion even Whitefield's gifts of oratory would have
left no record for our reading, for it is absolutely essential to
effective preaching; absolutely essential to success. Without it the
choicest gifts, the profoundest learning will achieve but little.
_With_ it, even humble qualifications and limited scholastic equipment
will accomplish--have often accomplished--great things for God and the
lives of men.

And this passion for preaching will be a passion for preaching for its
_own sake_. To the true preacher preaching, and everything connected
with preaching, will be things in which his soul delights. He will
glory in sermon making and ser