seed of civilization. But while the drill may scatter the wheat upon the cold ground, it may not pour warmth about the frozen clods or shed forth the refreshing dew or rain. When the living man called Luther or Whitefield or Wesley or Beecher or Brooks shines forth, then the mind lends warmth to frigid natures, calls down dew and rain upon the newly sown seed, lends light and inspiration to dull and sodden natures.

Should Plato reappear to-morrow in some hall, he need not fear lest the books have dispossessed him of his mission. A book is simply the mummy of a soul. A library is a graveyard where intellects are confined. A printed page catches and holds the passing thought and mood. Strawberries in June quickly pass, and housewives preserve them until winter. Thus books are preserved souls. Through his works Schopenhauer has pickled himself in salt brine, just as "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is Holmes preserved in the sweetness of sugar. The photographer makes a copy of Juliet, but pictures will never lead Romeo to resign the sweet girl. When books on the bringing up of children make mothers unnecessary, then the press will begin to interfere with the moral teachers. It is indeed given to the printed page to teach the truth regarding axioms, or the nature of solids and fluids, but even then the laboratory strengthens the book. But, so far as moral truth is concerned, the truth is never the full truth until it is organized into personality, and flashes in the eye or thrills in the voice, or glows in the reason, or guides through sound judgment. And so long as life is full of strife and conflict, so long as men are the children of misfortune, adversity, and defeat; so long as troubles roll over the earth like sheeted storms; so long as dark minds need light and inspiration, and the pilgrim band, floundering through the wilderness, needs a leader, and a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, will religion remain the guide, the hope, the friend, and support of the people.

Preaching is man-making, man-mending, and characterbuilding. On the one side it is a science-the science of the development of all the powers, animal, mental, moral, and social; the subordination of the lower impulses to the higher faculties, the symmetry and harmonization of all.

The genius of preaching is truth in personality. Mighty is the written word of God, but the word never conquered until it was "made flesh." Truth in the book is crippled. Truth in the intellectual system is a skeleton. Truth in personality is life and power. Always the printed philosophy is less than the speaking philosopher. Wallace and Bruce had their power over the clansmen, not by written orders, but by riding at the head of the host. By the torch of burning speech Peter and Bernard kindled the ardor of crusaders. When to Luther's thought was added Luther's personality, Germany was freed. Savonarola's arguments were brought together in a solid chain of logic, but it has been said that his flaming heart made the chain of logic to be "chain lightning." The printed truth cuts with a sharp edge, the spoken truth burns as well as cuts. Men have indeed been redeemed by the truth in black ink on white paper, but the truth quadruples its force when it is bound up in nerves, muscles, and sinews. The soul may be taught by travel, books, friends, occupation. Yet these truths stand in the outer court of the soul. It is not given to them to enter into the secret holy of holies, where the hidden life doth dwell. Preaching is plying men with the eternal principles of duty and destiny, so as to give warmth to the frigid, wings to the dull and low-flying, clarity to reason, accuracy to moral judgment, force to aspiration, and freedom to faith. Truth is the arrow, but speech is the bow that sends it home.

God

The nature and functions of preaching grow out of the divine method of education and growth for men. governs rocks by gravity, bees by instinct, trees by those grooves called natural laws. Man governs his locomotive by two rails, and the flanges upon the side of the wheel. But man, made in God's image, is the child of liberty, and God governs the pilgrim host through moral teachers, into whose minds great truths are dropped from heaven, and these men are sent on before the advancing multitude, to lead them away from the slough, to guide them out of the wilderness, and open up some spring in the desert. It is possible to enrich dead things from the outside. Soft wood may be veneered with mahogany, nickel may be coated with silver, and silver-plated with gold, but living things must be developed from the inside.

Would the gardener have a rich flush upon the rose? Let him feed the roots. Would the mother have the bloom of beauty upon the cheek of the child? Let her feed the

babe with good food, and the pure blood on the inside will lend the rosy tint to the cheek on the outside. Men cannot be made wise or strong or moral by exterior laws or agencies. There are two ways to help a thriftless man. One is to build him a house and place him therein. The other is to inspire in him the sense of industry, economy, and ambition, and then he will build his own house. All tools, books, pictures, laws, on the outside, begin with ideas on the inside. Inspire the reason, and man will fill the library with books. Wake up the taste and imagination in young men, and they will fill the galleries with pictures. Stir the springs of justice, and men will go forth to cleanse iniquities and right wrongs. Quicken the inventive faculty, and men will create tools and machines. It is as useless to seek to make men good or wise by law as to adorn leafless trees by tying wax flowers to bare branches. The time was when men talked about being clothed with righteousness and character, as if God were a wholesale goods merchant, and kept great bales of integrity, and cut off a new suit for each poor sinner. But righteousness and character are not made for man on the outside. Love, joy, justice represent something done with man on the inside. Our politicians talk about overproduction. In reality our industrial troubles are based upon under-hunger. If we could open up a hundred mouths in each living man, the cry of over-production would cease. The slave had only three mouths. He wanted a loaf, a cotton garment, a little tobacco. Therefore he bought little, manufacturing languished, and the slave States became poor.

But as the free laborer became educated, he wanted variety in foods, variety in clothes, wanted books, pictures. comforts, conveniences, and he bought widely, and all the Northern factories were busy day and night to supply his hundredfold hunger. Could we by sudden fiat of education open up a score of new wants and hungers through the quickening of the soul within, the new spiritual awak ening would appear in a thousand forms of industry and occupation. The great spiritual principles of Jesus Christ

are the most powerful stimulants to material civilization that the world has ever seen. It is said that Shakespeare's poetry brings thousands of visitors to Stratford every year. His poetry indirectly has created more wealth for the people of Stratford than any of the factories or looms in that thriving city. It is still an open question whether Wycliffe with his translation of the Scriptures has not done as much for the commerce of England as did Watt when he invented the tools that Wycliffe had first made necessary. Shaftesbury once said that Charles Spurgeon, without discussing problems of government, had done more for social reform and progress than any statesman of his era.

In former ages and generations doubtless men have needed to come in from the field and factory, store and street, and, coming together in one spot, have sought to cleanse the grime from their garments, to sharpen the spiritual faculties, to cast out selfishness, to test the deeds of life by Christ's principles, just as an artist, when his eye is jaded, tests the blue tint by the sapphire or the red by the ruby. But in these days many believe that churchgoing is no longer obligatory; that sermons have lost their juice and freshness, and having gone to church once in a month, they feel that they have placed the Almighty under everlasting obligations. Gone now a certain sanctity of the Sabbath, a certain reverence for the church, a certain refinement of conscience, a certain clarity and purity of moral judgment. Gone, also, the old era when the beggar was unknown in the little Christian community, when children and youth grew up without ever having beheld a drunkard, a thief, or a murderer, and when the door of the house or the granary had no lock or bar. Now one-half of the community never crosses the threshold of a church, either Catholic or Protestant. Multitudes, also, decline the moral obligations, and there has come a time when the poorhouse overflows, when the jails are full, when judges must work day and night to overtake the criminals.

Well has a great editor just said that this republic needs tools and culture less than it needs a revival of the moral imperative. From the view-point of the publicist, this writer expresses the wish that for a long time this nation.

might have two Sundays a week, for toning up its jaded moral sense. A great multitude of our people have laid the ten commandments on the table by a two-thirds majority. Indeed, they seem to have written and revised the old commandments so that they now read: Thou shalt have gods of self and ease and pleasure before me; thou shalt worship thine own imaginations as to houses and goods and business, and bow down and serve them; thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to see to it that all its hours are given to sloth and lounging and stuffing the body with rich foods, leaving the children of sorrow and ignorance to perish in their sodden misfortune; thou shalt kill and slay men by doing as little as possible thyself, and squeezing as much as possible out of others. Thou shalt look upon loveliness in womanhood to soil it with impurity. Thou shalt steal daily, the employer from the servant, and the servant from his employer, and the devil take the hindmost. Thou shalt get thy livelihood by weaving a great web of falsehoods and sheathing thyself in lies. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's house to possess it for thyself; thou shalt covet his office and his farm, his goods and his fame, and everything that is his. And to crown all these laws, the devil has added a new commandment-Thou shalt hate thy brother as thou dost hate thy

self.

Into this piteous lot have multitudes come. And there is restlessness in the heart, unhappiness in the home, hate in the task, anarchy in the street, whose end is chaos, destruction, and death. Plato has a pre-Christian statement as to the function of preaching, and its relation to social happiness and progress. "The things that destroy us are injustice, insolence, and foolish thoughts; and the things that save us are justice, self-command, and true thought, which things dwell in the living powers of God. Wherefore our battle is immortal. The angels and God fight with us as teachers, and we are their possessions."

In his Yale address ex-President White lamented that young men were turning from the learned professions to enter trade and commerce. Materialism, he thought, was an evil spirit that had given its cup of sorcery to youth, and beguiled them from the paths of noble scholarship and the intellectual life. Gone the poets Longfellow, Lowell,