f of the fact by running out of the room as fast as she
could. Follow the sow with her silk gown and her fancy cap, and in a
few seconds you will find that she has returned to the stye, and is
again wallowing in the mire. Just so it is with the unrenewed man.
Sin is his element.'

Could anything be weaker or in worse taste than that?

The pulpit has ceased to offend by any such exhibitions. The men in the
pews have advanced, and the men in the pulpit have had to do the same.
Men of science and of intellect and literature must have men of science
and of intellect and literature to preach to them. It is power the
ministry lacks. It fails because it is of the past--uses the language of
the past--prays the prayers of the past. Instead of seeking a revival in
the churches, it had better seek its own revival. We have some twelve
hundred clergy (Church and Dissent) in this great Babylon, and yet the
devoutest worshipper can scarce name a dozen as superior men. Yet
preaching is not the difficult thing ministers affirm. Literary men,
enterprising merchants, sharp attorneys, aspiring barristers, honourable
M.P.s, work infinitely harder, though professing infinitely inferior
aims. A popular actor certainly seeks no richer reward than a popular
parson; but the former will throw into his performance a life of which
the latter appears to have no idea. For the men who care not for the
manner but the matter, the pulpit has still less to offer. Where, then,
is the wonder that in London, where men are not driven to church or
chapel--where they do not lose caste because they do not observe the
required customs of respectable society--the mass are beyond the reach of
the preacher's voice, listening, it may be, to the sermons on our stones
and in our streets--the sermons the world's great ones and illustrious
leaders preach, when they worship railway kings, or erect statues to
royal debauchees? What wonder is it then that in life's busy scene the
still small voice of the pulpit grows weaker every hour?

POPULAR PREACHERS.

Church of England.

THE REV. J. C. M. BELLEW, S.C.L.

One of the wonders to us, looking back upon the middle ages, rich in all
the experience they lacked, is their faith in heathenism as a fact, long
after heathenism as a theology had given way to the victorious Cross. It
seems not only as if many Christian churches were erected on what were
once pagan temples, but as if, un