life may well be thankful for such a valuable handmaid here on earth.

And we may be sure that "the vision and the faculty divine" will also have to do with our life in God hereafter. If even our bodily life is to exist glorified in heaven, we can have little doubt that there also our mental powers-and this among them-will reach a higher stage of development. We shall not cease to be finite beings in the world to come; there, even as here, the eye will not be able to take in all. Surely there will be pictures to create, as well as scenes to behold, where the materials for such creation will be so much more beautiful and abundant. And thus the human imagination-with all its powers sanctified-may subserve the most practical uses for ever, in enhancing the joy of the redeemed who stand before the throne. of God, and gaze upon the heavenly glories imaged in the Crystal Sea.

THE USES OF THE IMAGINATION IN THE

CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.

[A Presidential Address delivered to the Manchester Congregational Board of Ministers, January 8th, 1883; subsequently utilized, in part, in addresses to students at Manchester and Rotherham; and also at an Ordination Charge, in June, 1891.]

THE IMAGINATION, in its widest sense, may be defined as "the image-making faculty of the human mind." It may be described as that power which the mind has of holding up before itself pictures of what we ourselves have seen or felt, and also of making new combinations of elements the most simple and familiar. This " representative faculty"-as Sir William Hamilton calls it-belongs naturally to every sound human mind. In discovery and invention, in science and statesmanship, and, indeed, in all the higher business of the world, it plays an important although often unsuspected part. I wish now to offer a few suggestions as to the value of this faculty in our own distinctive work. Many crude and new-fangled ideas are abroad as to the methods which the ministers of the gospel ought to adopt, in order to achieve success. Now, I believe that, in the faculty of imagination, all Christian ministers possess a "wonderful lamp," which may not

only give us light in our work, but by the very rubbing of which, so to speak, we may summon the most practical and valuable assistance. And I think we shall do well to make fuller and wiser use of this power, and of the aids which it can bring us, instead of listening too readily to the hawker's cry of " New lamps for old ones!" Sometimes, verily, a hawker's cry-the cry of men who would test ministerial labour and success by the methods of the shop and the standards of the market.

Consider, then, first of all, how greatly the Christian minister may be helped in his work of PREACHING by a right use of the Imagination.

The Bible, which is our text-book, is largely a book of History; and our appreciation of the scripturenarrative depends, to a large extent, on the vividness with which we realize in our own minds the characters which it portrays, and the events which it describes. Those of us who have read Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church must feel that the special charm and value of that book is largely due to the remarkable power of historical imagination which was possessed by the author. And there can be no doubt that our own ability to make appropriate and practical use of the Bible narratives in our sermons will depend in no small degree on the manner in which we present to our thought the characters and scenes delineated. It has become a fashion with some to decry such books as Conybeare and Howson's Life of St. Paul; the critics complain of a superabundance of geographical, historical, and other collateral details. But surely all such books are valuable, in so far as they help us to realize the circumstances in which the men and

women of the Bible lived and moved. Even such a book as Dr. Abbott's Philochristus-although it is a kind of romance-may be useful to us in bringing some aspects of the gospel story closer to our vision. No telescope is to be despised which enables us to see more clearly events that are centuries distant from us. On the other hand, the telescope is of no avail without the eye. Employing, then, all our knowledge of Bible times and Bible history, let us use our imagination as a seeing, rather than an allegorizing faculty. There has been more than enough of an artificial allegorizing of scripture story; and there has been not a little abuse of the imagination in this direction. I am convinced that, in dealing with the narratives of the Bible -including the narratives of the gospels-our chief power as preachers lies, not in quaint conceits and fanciful applications, but in bringing home to the hearts and consciences of our hearers those lessons which flow simply and directly from a vivid realization of the actual experiences portrayed in the history. Whatever else and more the Bible may be, it is at least a human book-a book written by men, about men, and for men; and it demands to be treated with human-ness. The men and women of scripture are not to be dangled by us as marionettes before the eyes of our hearers. Elijah is but one of many who were "of like passions with ourselves." Our own heart, conscience, and experience, utilized by our imagination, are the best interpreters of Bible history. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man"; and even if we know Greek well-which is possible and Hebrew better-which is perhaps more doubtful-we ought nevertheless, in this deeper sense,

to "consult the original," by reading the Bible in the light of human nature.

Again, the Bible is largely a book of Poetry; and our power to rightly interpret and handle its imagery depends, in no small degree, on the extent to which we cultivate our imagination. Not only have we in the Bible the poetical books, distinctively so-called, we have also poetry embedded in its narratives; and the prophets were, all of them, more or less poets. Now, to treat Bible poetry as if it were prose is one of the commonest exegetical blunders. And yet, how shall a man enter fully into the spirit of the Psalms unless there be somewhat of the lyrical in his own nature ? How shall he rightly expound or apply the language of the Book of Job without some appreciation of its dramatic form and spirit? How shall he intrepret the glowing predictions of the prophets if he comes to them as a mere chronicler or statistician, or even if he applies his fancy to them, as a man might try to read a telegram in cipher? How can a preacher make his hearers feel anything of the purpose and power of the Apocalypse, if he treats that magnificent allegory of the church's struggles and victory as if it were a chronological chart in hieroglyphics? The remarkable notions of the "AngloIsraelites," and the Great Pyramid-mongers, and those gentlemen who take it upon themselves to fix the precise date of the end of the world, may seem at first sight to be due to a misuse of the imagination. But, in reality, they are due rather to a suppression of that faculty. The poetry of prophecy is treated as if it were mere prose. Its "figures "both rhetorical and arithmetical-are taken literally, or at any rate in