ut up and fenced off into countless divisions,
to every one of which some earthly-agent or interest brings a
title-deed. The minister finds the land of the world, like some vast
tract of uncivilized territory, seized by wild squatters, owned and
settled by other parties, and, as a famous political-economist said
in another connection, there is no cover at Nature's table for him.
As with the soldier in the play, whose wars were over, _his_
"occupation's gone."

What is the minister, then? A ghost, or a figure like some in the
shop-window, all made up of dead cloth and color into an appearance of
life? Verily, he comes almost to that. But no such shape, no spectre
from extinct animation of thousands of years ago, like the geologist's
skeletons reconstructed from lifeless strata of the earth, can answer
the vital purposes of the revelation from God. Of no pompous or
abstract ritual administration did the Son of God set an example. He
had a parable for the steward living when _He_ did; He called
King Herod, then reigning, _a fox_, and the Scribes and Pharisees
hypocrites; He declared the prerogatives of His Father beyond Caesar's;
He maintained a responsibility of human beings coextensive with the
stage and inseparable from the smallest trifle of their existence. He
did not limit His marvellous tongue to antiquities and traditions. He
used the mustard-seed in the field and the leaven in the lump for His
everlasting designs. His finger was stretched out to the cruel stones
of self-righteousness flying through the air, and phylacteries of
dissimulation worn on the walk. He was so _political_, He would have
saved Jerusalem and Judea from Roman ruin, and wept because He could
not, with almost the only tears mentioned of His. Those who teach in
His name should copy after His pattern.

"_Confine yourselves to the old first Gospel, preach Christianity,
early Christianity_," we ministers are often told. But what is
Christianity, early or late, and what does the Gospel mean, but a rule
of holy living in every circumstance now? Grief and offence may come,
as Jesus says they must; misapplications and complaints, which are
almost always misapprehensions, may be made; but are not these better
than indifference and death? No doubt there is a prudence, and still
more an impartial candor and equity, in treating every matter, but
no beauty in timid flight from any matter there is to treat. The
clergyman, like every man, speaks at his peri