nknown is the man who may often be heard explaining the success
attained by other brethren but denied to himself, by references to what
he calls "playing to the gallery" or "catering for popular applause."
_He_, forsooth, will not so demean himself as to be guilty of practices
so degrading. Thought is _his_ provision for those who come to hear.
_He_ appeals to _thinkers_. Alas! for him, his "thinkers," if only he
knew it, are human and have a mind to be pleased. "Very intellectual,"
may be the verdict with which they leave the church, but people cannot
always be on the intellectual rack, and both the Sabbath and the
Sanctuary were designed for rest for weary brains. We have known a
very learned man to admit, as he came away from hearing an exceedingly
thoughtful discourse, that, to him, the preacher's address to the
children had been the most enjoyable part of the service. The sermon
was very clever; but--well, he had had a hard and trying week of it,
and came to church with a tired mind and a troubled heart.

So it has come to pass that many a preacher has fallen into a homiletic
dulness quite foreign to his own disposition. In the home, the social
circle, in every place saving the pulpit he was human and natural. He
had a jest to cheer the depressed, a tear for sorrow. He could rejoice
with those who rejoiced, weep with those who wept. He was responsive
to the piping of gladness. In pain or pleasure he was ever a welcome
guest, but in the temple he condemned by tone and manner every bit of
humanity into which he had been unwittingly betrayed, and atoned for
his every lapse into naturalness by dreariness growing drearier. Not
so did Jesus Christ preach, else the common people had not "heard Him
gladly;" not so, else the little children had not gathered around His
feet, nor shouted their Hosannas as he rode up to the city gate. Not
dull were those sermons that drew the multitudes from the towns to the
wilderness, and held them so entranced that the time for bodily
refreshment passed unheeded by. "Never man spake like this Man," they
said, as they spread their garments in the path by which the preacher
came up to Mount Zion. He revealed God; He rebuked sin; He poured His
denunciations upon the age; He tore off the mask from the face of
hypocrisy; not one jot or tittle of truth did He bate for the sake of
applause, yet all Judea went out to Him, and all the regions beyond
Jordan. In _His_ preaching there was