nd was reminded of
his "more perfect knowledge of that way" which would one day make all
the deeper the blackness of his condemnation. The joints of his
harness were undone.

And so in that time of beginnings was set forth for all after years on
the stage of that Eastern land the pattern of Gospel preaching, and its
great copyists in all subsequent generations have come forth bearing,
as their first word to men, the message of accusation. "All have
sinned and come short of the glory of God;" such has been their opening
announcement. Sin is rebellion against God; such has been their
all-embracing definition. "The soul that sinneth it shall die;"--this
"certain fearful looking for of judgment" they have held up before
mankind. "Thou art the man!" has been the constant challenge of the
Christian ambassador. It would be an interesting employment to journey
back across the past and listen for this note as it fell from the lips
of the great preachers of bygone ages. Our own Connexional fathers,
however, as the figures most familiar to our minds, may remind us how
faithful the pulpit used to be in the execution of this hard task.
Some of us are old enough to remember as common, a phrase which now we
hear only occasionally and in the out of the way corners of our Church.
It was the expression "black sermon" as descriptive of a discourse in
which the sterner side of the revelation was enunciated. Such sermons
in those days formed part of every preacher's armoury. They were
sermons of accusation; sermons about sin; sermons diagnostic of the
state of the human heart. In these discourses the sinner was assailed
through the gateway of his fears. The old preachers believed there was
such a place as Hell, and said so,--sometimes with a great wealth of
staking, figurative language which was perhaps used less symbolically
than literally. They believed in a final and general judgment in which
the dead, small and great, with such as shall be then living upon the
earth, will be called to stand before the Great White Throne to give an
account of the deeds done in the body. Clearly did they see this
coming day and clearly did they proclaim that at any time its terrors
may break upon a careless and prayerless world. Some of them gained
celebrity by the vigour and colour of their descriptions. In the North
of England they still speak of the sermon with which Joseph Spoor
transported multitudes into the circumstances of that awfu