es are most of them engaged in business, and his aim is to
teach them that Christianity is as fit for the counting-house as it is
for the closet--as fit for the week-day as the Sabbath--as fit for the
world as it is for the church. Some men once in the pulpit seem to
forget that there is such a thing as the living present. They are
perpetually dwelling on the past, trying to make dry bones live. They
can tell you what the old divines said. They can quote their favourite
commentators. They can parody the religion of men whose religion at any
rate was a real thing, but that is all. Of our times they have no idea.
Of the human heart, as it beats and burns in this age of the--

"Steamship and the railway, and the thoughts that move mankind,"

they are profoundly ignorant. They are strangers in a strange land.
Amongst us but not of us--of an alien race and speaking an alien
tongue--with garments, it may be, unspotted by the world, but without the
strength and the heart and the rich experience which contact with, and
mastery over, the world alone can give. Mr. Morris is not one of this
class--nor is he a painter of idle pictures, whose talk is of fields ever
clothed in living green--of white garments--of pavements of sapphire and
of shining thrones--nor is he a dreamy sentimentalist lisping out the
attributes of the Majesty of heaven and of earth in terms of maudlin
endearment, as some drivelling dotard might tell of the goodness and the
virtue and the precocious cleverness of the child of his old age. Were
Mr. Morris either of these, he might have a larger audience--he might be
a more popular preacher--but he certainly would be a less useful one. He
thinks, and he gives you something to think about as well. His own creed
he has not taken upon trust, nor does he want you to do so either. He
has a clear, definite conception of spiritual realities, and he aims to
give you the same. Mr. Morris has not genius--but he has intellect clear
and strong--perhaps a little deficient in fire, and a habit rare, but
invaluable in a minister, of independent thought and action. As a
preacher he ranks high in his denomination. Out of the pulpit he is
almost unknown. As a platform orator I know not that he has any actual
existence at all. I imagine he belongs to that growing class in all
denominations who have less faith in public religious meetings every
year.

As a writer, Mr. Morris has acquired some little reputation;