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would also be acute enough to hear the vaster music of the world's perfection and joy, which, if it does not drown the dirge, immensely relieves it, as, indeed, Huxley seemed to feel. Revelation throughout consistently regards the material universe as fundamentally right and good, always on the side of righteousness, and this we believe will be the last word of science.

III. We conclude by observing how the truthfulness of nature bears on Our Hope of Immortality. Here we come to a primitive and universal instinct. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." All peoples have revealed an instinct for the future, framed some theory of immortality, and if in this life only we have hope in Christ we are exceptions to the race, singular in our skepticism and misery. It will, however, be again objected: How can we trust a mind which has been developed from the mind of the lowest animals when it draws such large conclusions? Yet why should we dishonor this impulse and disown these intimations of immortality? The delicate instincts of the inferior creatures are entirely reliable, as we see in migrant birds. "In autumn the swallows will collect together and suddenly vanish. Even the caged bird, if a migrant, catches the fever and frets impatiently in his prison. That a chiffchaff, whose daily occupation for months has been to pick grubs from the trees, and who has never left his favorite wood, should suddenly, some evening, be seized by an uncontrollable impulse to start for North Africa, is surely matter for wonder. And in spring, too, when you see the first swallow, it is a startling thought that the small bird, whom you see practicing his short swallow-flights, perhaps only some ten days before, started on his northward voyage from Natal." The instinct of the little creatures is true, it does not fool them, they find beyond the sea the summer lands they seek. It is folly to tell us that the migration instinct of the bird is the consequence of the experience of its ancestors, and that we fully understand it, while the hope of immortality is purely prophetic and entirely inexplicable. We do not understand the migratory instinct of the bird; it is a marvelous fact despite all our assumptions; yet even supposing that the

1Headley, Structure of Birds.

modern interpretation of instinct is correct, and that the migratory impulse is the capitalized experience of the bird race, who can pretend that we understand all that is included in the constitution and history of the human soul? Springing out of the depths of nature, may not our spirit be influenced by facts and laws which dip down into the infinite? According to the naturalist we are partakers of the unknown cycles of the past; eternity is set in our heart, and our belief in persistent life may be based upon facts of the abiding universe that we can now no more comprehend than the bird of today can comprehend the ice age in which the migratory instinct is believed to have taken its rise. Our instinct for the unknown world and future life shall not betray us. Not in vain has our wing been fashioned for a far flight, and our daring hope shall not make us ashamed. Through dark nights and trackless skies, over wild seas, battling with storms, puzzled by strange lights and glooms, the trembling birds urge their perilous flight to sing amid the sunshine and roses of the lands of the sun; so through sickness, age, death and the grave we greatly hope, and our hope shall not make us ashamed.

The eternal Spirit stands behind all physical facts and laws, using them according to the purpose of his sovereign will, and it little troubles us as to how far it may please him to work through the dust. With him we have to do; we are always sure that his final purpose is intellectual and moral; in him we put our trust; he will keep faith with us. Nothing in modern science dismays us, it confirms our greatest beliefs and hopes. . "Faith is the heroism of the intellect"; just that. The intellect follows the lines of the experimental world to their last refinement; then, still holding to the secret analogy of things, it becomes heroic, and committing itself to the abyss of the future lands on the diamond rock. Faith is reason consulting all the lessons of time and experience, then projecting itself into realms of the unknown. It shall not be confounded.

W.L. Watkinson

ART. III. THE CHIEF WORK OF THE MINISTER OF GOD1

WHEN Samuel Wilberforce was Bishop of Oxford he wrote in his diary, under date of November 15, 1855: "In reply to my question, 'How do you influence people of different classes?' the Abbé Codant said: 'In instructed places mainly the sermon is trusted to; in ignorant parts processions, exposition of the Sacrament, etc.'" The entry is of small importance. Who cares especially for the opinion of Abbé Codant except as showing that then, as now, the realm of the Christian ministry has many roads of privilege and duty? The demands upon the ministry are increasingly numerous and varied. It is a commonplace that a minister must be a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, able to put his hand to anything and everything. He must be a shepherd of the flock, a man of affairs with administrative abilities, bookkeeper, committeeman, counselor, teacher, miracle-worker, and what not. Some place the emphasis upon one function, some upon another. I have heard it said that if a man is a good pastor, that is all that is necessary, or if he is tactful-a good "mixer" is the modern phrase or a good all-round man, he will be a success. But the chief work of the minister of God is not as a pastor or an adviser, not as a tactician or an administrator. The chief work of the minister is something else. The chief work of the minister of God is to preach. To that he is called. To that, in the Methodist Episcopal Church, at least, he is ordained. Have you never heard a bishop say to a candidate for deacon's orders as he hands him the Bible, "Take thou authority to read the Holy Scriptures in the Church of God, and to preach the same," or to a candidate for elder's orders, "Take thou authority as an Elder in the Church, to preach the word of God, and to administer the Holy Sacraments in the Congregation"? Have you never heard a bishop at such an ordination service pray, "Most merciful Father, we beseech thee to send upon these thy servants thy heavenly bless

'Matriculation Address given September 26, 1906, Drew Theological Seminary, Madi

son, N. J.

ings, that they may be clothed with righteousness, and that thy word spoken by their mouths may have such success that it may never be spoken in vain. Grant also that we may have grace to hear and receive what they shall deliver out of thy most holy word, or agreeably to the same, as the means of our salvation," etc.? If Methodist ministers have any official designation it is "preacher-in-charge." From the beginning we have laid emphasis on preaching. And both naturally and rightly. Methodism was a revival of primitive Christianity, a restatement of the principles of the gospel. How could the evangelicals of the eighteenth century do otherwise than preach? Where in history is there a record of a great religious awakening apart from preaching? Not at Nineveh, nor Jerusalem, nor Rome. Wycliffe and his "simple priests" by their preaching made a new England in the fourteenth century, as did Wesley and Whitefield in the eighteenth. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was the result of preaching. "Wherever the pulpit was set up the Reformation spread, and wherever the Reformation spread the pulpit was set up." There is nothing more certain than that which has been affirmed by more than one writer, that if it were necessary to vindicate the wisdom of God in making preaching the chief means of the establishment and extension of his kingdom, a sufficient defense would be found in the remarkable power which the Christian pulpit has wielded, especially at certain critical periods in the history of the church.

There was a time when the authority of the pulpit was supreme. It is not so now. In the last quarter of a century there has been a perceptible loss of pulpit influence and power. It is said that wherever preaching retains its vitality it is an exception to the rule. Certain it is that the preacher is no longer the only teacher in the community. He is not the only learned man; he is not even the only Bible student. There is doubtless a modern impatience of preaching; there has been a loss of novelty. But does the preacher, as some assert, only afford a sort of religious pastime to the people? Preachers are charged with being dull, prolix, without variety, and narrow. They are caricatured by the illustrated press either as sleek, well-fed, unctuous wearers of the cloth, or as thin, gaunt, sanctimonious clerics. It is a common

impression now as it always has been that preachers are among the laziest of lazy folks. A reviewer of Jane Austen's novels, commenting on the fact that she chose her characters from the class of life in which she herself lived, the so-called middle class-the squires and country gentlemen, the clergymen and upper-class prosperous tradespeople says: "It is, however, a remarkable fact that all the mankind are always at leisure to picnic and dance attendance on the ladies at any hour of the day; we have no business men; rides and excursions and picnics are always provided with a full complement of idle young men to watch the young women. To this rule the clergymen are, of course, no exception." "Of course." That's the pity. Of course! Laymen think they lay a laurel crown on the brow of the minister when they say, "He is a hard worker." It seems to be the prevalent notion that preachers are well-meaning, easy-going souls, who subsist on a chicken diet and raise a hymn-tune now and again. To be sure. But is not there some ground for such an opinion? John Stoughton, a sturdy Puritan, one of the chaplains to James I, once wrote a quaint book entitled Baruch's Sore Gently Opened. Some modern critics of the pulpit are not so considerate. Even more serious charges are brought against ministers and the church. They are thought to be what God is not-respecters of persons. They read an expurgated edition of Saint James's epistle and fail to recall what that apostle wrote about the poor and the rich. One of the most influential labor leaders in England has said that there is no place in the workingman's program for religion. This must be because Christianity seems puerile and impotent. Kaufmann asserts that "the cross, once a symbol of suffering, is now a symbol of slavery." This must be because Christianity seems oppressive. But not alone hostile critics call attention to the unfortunate estrangement of many working men from the church. Dr. Peabody says: "We find a gulf of alienation and misinterpretation lying between the social movement and the Christian religion; a gulf so wide and deep as to recall the judgment of Schopenhauer, that Christianity, in its real attitude toward the world, is absolutely remote from the spirit of the modern age." And Professor Commons in his Social Reform and the Church is more specific,

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