acrifice and victory
are vital to the inner health and joy of the Church herself. _This_,
too, the preacher must remember. Solemn, indeed, is the obligation
resting upon him, and solemnly have the great preachers of all ages
taken this responsibility to heart. "The care of the churches!"--how
heavily it lay upon the shoulders of those early ambassadors whose
confessions of fear concerning failure are written in the epistles.
How it has driven to the Mercy Seat for help and guidance those whose
work it has been in troublous times, to keep the flock of God committed
to their custody! The feeding of the sheep in the wilderness, the care
of the lambs, the strengthening of the weak, the endless, patient,
prayerful striving needed in the pursuit of erring, foolish, falling
ones, that all may be presented perfect in Christ Jesus--what demands
do these make upon the preacher's noblest powers! In the dressing and
polishing, to change the figure, of each quarried stone that the result
may be seen in a building after the similitude of a palace, flashing in
the light of God--here has lain the task in which many a glorious life
has been gloriously spent; for even Jesus could not entrust to a man a
grander or more onerous task than this!

And what manner of preaching is needed for the service of this saving
and edifying end? It must surely be a preaching _of_ the Church _to_
the Church. It is to be questioned whether we have not largely failed
to place before our people the New Testament doctrine of the Church.
With such a failure may be associated another:--To emphasise duly the
importance of those sacraments which are the inheritance of the Church
from age to age. Can we deny that there is among our members a
tendency to view very lightly the privileges and obligations of their
membership in what we call--we have sometimes thought unhappily and
with unfortunate effect--our societies? Again, can it be denied that
amongst us as a people the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is
undervalued? Faithfulness to the Church and to her sacraments run
together. How many are there who have but the dimmest possible
conception of what the Church is and of what membership in the Church
really signifies and involves? There is much work to be done
here--spade work we might almost call it--for the ground has hardly yet
been broken amongst us. May we venture a suggestion that, among things
inherited from an earlier day, the word "societies"