lusion. In the
discussion referred to it was contended, perhaps established, that the
period of greatest moral and spiritual danger lies a score or more
years further along the road. From forty to fifty, and nearer fifty
than forty, was maintained to be the fateful age. Youth has innocence,
ambition, enthusiasm, ideals. Youth has generous impulses, has not yet
been soured by disappointments, has not yet found out the cynicism of
the world, has not become infected by the canker of covetousness. It
has made no enemies, is not corrupted by success, is not daunted by
failure. A score of years later some or all of these things will have
happened to a man. Harder has become the world, fiercer the battle in
which he is engaged, lower burn the fires of life; enthusiasm has faded
as grey hairs have come. _These_ are the perilous years.

There is one thing the preacher must never forget:--That the men and
women before him go in constant peril from temptation. Not of the
avowedly non-Christian only is this true, but of all. Yonder man,
known for his respectability, his regular attendance at the sanctuary,
falters, perhaps, this very day on the crumbling edge of a moral
precipice. Ever and anon some one is missed from the means of grace.
Where is he? Hush! Tell it softly and with tears. He has fallen who
but recently bade so fairly to carry his cross to the summit of the
hill. Can it be that he fell because in the House of Prayer no voice
warned him? Can it be that he has committed the greater sin because no
reproof was whispered in his ear concerning the beginnings of
transgression? Was there no message committed to the preacher for that
man as he drew near the parting of the ways? Did the messenger
suppress the truth because it was hard to utter?

What, then, is it that is asked? Not, of course, a ministry of
continual denunciation, of constant reproach, of endless
accusation--not that, but a ministry in which the witness shall be not
one-sided but complete. Let us hear, if you please, of the sweeter
things; tell us again, _and again_, of that divine Fatherhood in which
must be our final trust; whisper in our cars of the gentleness of God
and the infinite tenderness of His Son; but tell us _all_, for so
wayward are we, so presumptuous, so prone to go astray that we need to
hear of chastisement as well as mercy. We must be reminded that "the
way of transgressors is hard" as well as of the blessing that the Lo