rd the prevailing mode. The convention of the time may decide
that it is not quite "the correct thing" to lay too much emphasis on
the harder teaching of the Christian belief. Whether unpopular with
the people or not, this teaching may be unpopular with the preachers.
We do not speak of these unpleasant things, for why be singular in
direful prophecy? Of some preachers, to summarise, we will say that
their need is a recovery of the sense of sin; of others that a deepened
consciousness of every man's power to triumph over his inherited
tendencies, his circumstances, his training and the temptations of his
age, must precede the return of success. To others we would venture a
reminder that the preacher might, perhaps, be all the better for a
little more personal independence, and for the realisation that he is
not responsible only to men for the manner in which his work is done,
but to Him who sent him out to preach the whole message of His heart.
The thing for the preacher to do is to learn the truth and tell it,
even though it be bitter to the hearer and bitterer to himself; even
though it make short work of social respectability and conventional
religiosity, bringing the blush of shame to the cheek and setting the
pulses throbbing with the fear of the lightnings of God.

Faithfulness, then, is essential to the completeness of the
message--faithfulness as to the true condition of the soul and its
position in the sight of God. As Samuel stood before Saul in that
fateful hour when the king, having disobeyed the commandments of the
Lord, had brought of the sheep and of the oxen which he should have
utterly destroyed; as the prophets, the apostles, the Master alike
lifted up their witness against a corrupt and stiff-necked people, so
the preacher of to-day must bear his testimony against the sins of men;
must pronounce the penalties of ungodliness. A revelation of the
transgression of the individual, of the lost state of every soul out of
Christ, are part of the Word received from Him who sent him. This
declaration must not concern the individual alone. To the age, also,
he has a message of kindred truth. The pulpit is erected as a witness
against the generations as they come and go. It is by the preacher
that Jesus Christ speaks to successive centuries. He is the true
oracle of God. Against the carelessness, the covetousness, the
debauchery and corruption of the nations, God would speak through him.
Against the