"The better men will always conquer the better cause. I suppose no cause could be so good, that sustained by bad men and opposed by any error whose champions were men of spotless lives, it would not fall. The truth must conquer, but it must first embody itself in goodness."-Phillips Brooks.

"Service is the key-note of the Heavenly Kingdom, and he who will not strike that note shall have no part in the music."-Henry Van Dyke.

A Greylock Pulpit.

LIVING AND PREACHING.

Let your light so shine before yonr Father which is in Heaven.

men, that they may see your good works, and glorify Matt. 5: 16.

And he said unto them, go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Mark 16: 15.

Whatever the dictionaries may say, there is no difference between living and preaching. There is no real living that does not preach. There is no real preaching that does not live. Preaching is broader than persuasive speech even for a moral end. The life itself is the best sermon. That is the apple of gold in the silver picture of the style. To live is to shine. We are by nature children of light. This light will shine if we will "let" it. Though sinners indeed, we are also men. Our depravity is real, but not total. No small part of our depravity is revealed in the denial of the essential dignity of our nature. If there are shallow views of sin, there are more shallow views of man. We can not honor the Creator by dishonoring the creature. We have done dishonor to the creature even when our intention was good and when the mind was moving in the right direction. We are not mere sparks struck off from the infinite Orb. God has not devised any separation of his luminous quality from ours. The light in us is Divine. All it requires is opportunity. Good works prove that the light has its own way. Their eloquence is that of life. Their light is not a reflected glory on an indifferent or worthless surface. Men see your good works and glorify the Father. Men exult in the good and are lifted into enthusiam for God, not as those adopted, not as paupers, but as those who see their normal nature grounded in and to be glorified by God.

The great concern of life is to let the true nature have its way. For a time at least, the light that is in us may be darkness. This light has not been analyzed as yet. We do not know how far the prodigal can wander and yet be able to come "himself" again. We can not tell how long the

elder brother can sulk in the field and still reclaim his birth-right. Son-ship underlies the sin of each. We have good grounds for hope. The spectrum analysis reveals a chemical effect not disclosed in colors. There is a light in every man. It may be covered. It may be dimmed. It may not be allowed its true way, but when it is given its right of way, it needs no herald to announce its nature, no artist to prove its beauty, no scribe to give it label, no sage to to tell its source.

Successful preaching is known by the character that it builds. Everywhere and in all things, all appearances to the contrary, the only infallible test is life. Many churches and ministers make much of the year-book. It does give us the addresses of the bretheren and churches, but so far as it is designed to reveal the life of the church. it is a device of Satan himself and calculated to confcund the very elect. If manhood is the end of preaching it is also the beginning. Whatever we do, from the giving of a cup of cold water to the delivery of a sermon, from a business letter to a closet prayer, in work or play, at fireside, funeral or feast, the only power is the power of luminous life. There is nothing attractive in comparison with an earnest, happy, large, hopeful, buoyant manhood. “Go preach ' is included in let your light so shine." It follows from this that most preaching must be done by the laymen, and that all merely formal preaching is hypocrisy. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and do not persuade by the eloquence of a generous, kind, humble, unsuspecting, vanity hating, sacrificing, magnanimous, optimistic life I am a zero, a minus quantity, perhaps a hypocrite. It is true that there is grace and grace. There is gift and gift. Still The rank is but the guinea's stamp.” A man is a preacher and a preacher is a man for a' that and a' that. We can not all be Savonarolas, Whitefields, Robertsons, Spurgeons, Beechers, but we can all be true men and women like James, John, Peter. Nathaniel and Mary. You do not need to be ordained to preach. Your mother ordained you. A council may possibly discover the fact. Their work often gets behind, since God works so much faster than the councils. When John was baptizing at the Jordan, the temple authorities sent a committee down to look at his papers, and to satisfy themselves whether he could be classified by them. The examination culminated when John was asked by the smartest man in the embassy; "What sayest thou of thyself?" He said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." That was enough. One of the heretics of yesterday was that good Samaritan who went down to Jericho just behind the priest and Levite. He was a layman. He could have given a very good address if he had been allowed to speak that day at Jericho before the conference, at which the priest and Levite were afraid to be late, when they passed by "on the other side." We may be appointed for one thing and ordained for another. One good thing done well prepares for a higher form of usefulness. Philip and his companions corrected abuses in the distribution of the poor fund, and this led to another and more difficult form of preaching. No extra ceremony was required. A fireman is ordained to put out fires. He may or may not have a uniform. The hose must be just as straight as he can uncoil it. His preaching must be direct.

Every man preaches who does his duty. Duty is a deep thing with him. He will not feel guilty for whistling on Sunday and coolly overreach his neighbor on a week day. He does not blush for failing to take his hat off in church, and chide himself for it weeks after, and then oppose some good work because he himself did not propose it. He will not have compunctions for breaking arbitrary, artificial, social customs, while making room for a lie. A man called to preach to a church to-day, is wise to assume that men have no small amount of instruction from many sources, and so can leave himself more room to deal with men on lines of inspiration. The power of this inspiration lifts the soul, secures reformation and matches the ideal with motive adequate to prevail. It is possible to believe in God, to believe in Jesus Christ, and not believe in any large practical way in the Holy Spirit. Such make little or no progress because the emphasis with them is mainly instruction and incidentally inspiration. They may be men of moral ideas naturally, getting them from their ancestors, or by mingling with men and by hard knocks about the world. They are wise in approaching men. They can carry them along by a genial art. Still further, they may be endowed with imagination. There may be a native facility of living in the unseen. They can tell moral futures just as men on change deal in business futures. Such are often far-sighted and faithful people, differing amongst themselves all the way from Moses down to Rahab, as given in the catalogue of those who died without the promise. The man I might describe is a true man. He will sacrifice himself without thinking it sacrifice. His emotional nature is not deficient. The boiling point in him is not so high but the sight of his brethren warms him so that he kindles with a tender fire. He attends church, and a cumulative order of service may find him alternately in tears or laughter. Better, he has enthusiasm and can make a wave of emotion which goes beyond passive feeling and enters upon resolution and action. Give him conviction. He is a believer. He has the believing desire and temper. He is trying to make his creed longer, if he can at the same time make it deeper. He would get further into man's nature and God's heart. Practical, he does not tear down without building up. Honest, he does not pretend that he is without doubts. In earnest and in motion, he carries men at times into mistakes. Within the bounds of human conception yet never realized, we might go on attributing to this man indefinitely extended powers so that he might have all the genius of Moses, Dante, Goethe and Shakspeare, yet fail relatively, because of the need of such spiritual illumination as is seen in the writings of the apostle John. This is the true need of the Holy Spirit set forth not in wild exhortation of cant, but in the realized attainment of some men. It is not held that the Holy Spirit must work on lines that are narrowed to the type of one apostle. On the other hand he is vital in all progress, physical, mental, moral, social, as well as spiritual. In the spiritual realm there is also endless variety. What we here contend for is that large life of inspiration developed in us by obedience to the laws of the Spirit as He works in the spiritual range of the mind. It is not a blind leap into mystery. It follows up the earthly life of the Elder Brother and rests the new advance of the spiritual kingdom on the truth He furnishes. This is the solid material, in

fact, on which the solid super-structure is being reared. The order of science has been to gather the facts, to set down the implied force revealed in the experiment, and lastly to deduce from the facts and force some law. Watt saw the steam escaping from the tea-kettle. A fact. He observed that it had power to lift the cover. A force. He deduced from this that whenever he could capture that force he could lift all sorts of things. A law. Christianity follows the same method. The ideal manliness of Jesus Christ is admitted on all hands. We have it conceded. A fact. We are now ready for the second step. Here are men whose lives are coarse, narrow and passionate, who by contact with this Elder Brother, and by making His teachings the rule of their lives, have been transformed into noble types of character, ever advancing in all that is companionable and strong. The quick and scientific inference is, that here we have a force. One step further. This step is a deduction verified millions of times. We obey the injunction, "prove all things." Therefore hold fast this good law, namely, that where any man will put himself within the range of the same force, his life will be as certainly developed and transformed. The baptism of the Spirit follows law. The Spirit of God is patient with man in the period of conduct. He leads him up from nothing to the ten commandments. He sends the moral genius to lead his countrymen in the paths of righteousness. Finally appears the perfect One who speaks "with authority, but not as the scribes." To stop here is too often the failure of those who interpret the laws of the spirit. Christ, localized in history, is lost. Christ risen, is alive for evermore. Our imagination becomes mere fancy and speculation, when we try to tell in advance what a revelation should be or should not be. When, however, we are given the truth and its direction, the Spirit of God can without magic, carry up the imagination from a secure foundation building "many mansions." The life of our Lord is a multiplyer, the experience of the invisible Church is a multiplicand. “Greater things than these shall ye do." "I have many things to tell you, but ye can not bear them now." Imagination becomes faith when guided by God. The universal Spirit brings all things to our remembrance. He addresses us with truth. He gives the world, under the laws of the Spirit, its Pentecosts, its reformations, its great missionary awakenings, its temperance revivals. Men are caused to make restitution, to break their idols of various sorts beside those of wood and stone. To-day the air is filled with larger desires for unity in the Christian church. When the Parthians. Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea. Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, both Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians" come together again it will not be to go apart. The Master's last prayer for unity will be answered.

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It is not the enough to say that we believe in God, and in Jesus Christ. We are to see God present. We may not simply say that it is not for us to raise the sun, to pray for the rain, to harness the seasons, all of which is very true. Who can not sympathize with the idea that "God is never so far off as even to be near," and that other word. “God's in His heaven, all's right with the world"? The law of the spiritual world is, that any man