ng
forth of what life and character, personal and national, may be, and
_must_ be, to please Him and realise the blessing the Creator had it in
His heart to give to man when first He sent him forth in the glory of
His image. For such preaching, we have already said, men are waiting,
listening, longing. They wait, too, for a new declaration of the high
provisions of help available for human endeavour. Men instinctively
anticipate that the ideals of God concerning them will be high, but
they anticipate, also instinctively, that the provision for the
realisation of these ideals will be sufficient. They do not ask that,
for the sake of human weakness, God shall make honesty less than
honest; truth less than true; purity less than pure, but they do ask
that for all these things He shall give grace and guidance. Does our
preaching answer these instinctive expectations, these deep longings,
these inborn hopes in those to whom we are sent? Do we truly put
before them that high life their spirits yearn to live? Do we show
them the path "o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent," to the
heights that kiss the stars?

If we do, well; but if not:--Then, perhaps, we should not wonder, nor
be astonished, if pews are empty, if church membership declines, if men
say that there is little profit in coming to hear thoughts no higher
than their own. They look for the preacher to ask for better, higher,
harder things than all their other leaders. If he fail in this his
church has but little to draw them within its doors. Practical
idealism is essential to effective and successful preaching.

CHAPTER IV.

The Note of Edification.

The preacher is appointed for the upbuilding of the Church and of the
individual believer upon "the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone." Upon this
foundation, with almost infinite care, with untiring labour and
solicitude and prayerfulness, has he to rear "a temple fitly framed
together" of "gold, silver and precious stones;" upon this foundation
he has to build the fabric of saintly character in men. Only that
preacher is truly successful who, in the end, is able humbly to claim
to have been in this sense a "wise master-builder;" who can point to
the results of his labours in the beauty and strength of the churches
in which he has toiled, in the saintliness of the men and women to whom
he has spoken the re-creating, re-edifying word.