of the old fanatics; and our Wall Streets and State Streets rung out the cry, "Down with Slavery."

It seems to be a principle, that whatever partakes of the nature of message must have the conditions of its enforcement very much within itself. The word "fire" is uttered at early night in the streets of a peaceful village. No one cares. It is done in the sport of some boys. At another time, the word brings instantly every sleeper upon his feet and forth to the contest; because, from the very tones the man uses, from the very way of his speaking, all are sure he is proclaiming a terrible fact. The very announcement carries its proof. Longinus, the early Greek critic, sets down Paul as the first master of undemonstrated statements; utterances without the form of demonstration, and yet they go forth with the efficacy of demonstration. We have, in the main, the explanation of this fact or power in this apostle's history and experience; in the fact that he came to believe by literally seeing. He did not take the gospel,-receive it as truth from the teaching or testifying of Peter, and the other apostles who were before him. It was, I repeat, by beholding. It came upon him as a fresh and huge revelation, by . no second hand. As a streaming and burning column from heaven it came, and entered him at once, in fulness as light and warmth. And, as he came to believe by seeing, he made others believe, because he ever spake as one who had seen. His very mode and temper of speech was his argument. His vast emotion before the revealings of truth was his argument. The scathing of his brow from the fiery revelation; the brand, or scar, it then took on; the blear and anguished eyes

even, were his argument. Words coming out of such conditions, without any other backing, fell with a convincing effect. It is true of no other eloquence, as it is of the preaching kind, that its seat is in the man. Christianity, in its great facts, is authenticated in the preacher's experience. It has become a concrete embodiment in his soul; and all objective truth becomes. a visibility before him. The unseen and eternal he looks upon. It is superfluous to say how such a man, with the saving message within him and the massed auditors before him, will speak. It will be, very likely, with a process not hinted in the books; in the use of short links and abrupt connections, the quick forging of his own heart; in the utterance of words and phrases, charged, as they go, with the very instincts of truth; and hence with authority they go; with strong impulsion he speaks; with bulks and points he speaks; at once heavy to strike, and keen to enter in.

Nearly all the singularly effective in speech have been memorable in the use of phrases; have wrought the contents of a volume into a sentence; have concentred the Divine gospel in a word, and let it forth. Paul shows himself one of the greatest of these masters of phrases. Two or three words, — and all the powers and mysteries of redemption are conveyed; and if you hear them once, they are ever within you. Where there is this short, cohesive putting, there is almost necessarily the central warmth and the experimental self-evidencing. It is something the heart knows assuredly, and feels profoundly, and then flings off. Then, also, it is something the hearts over against are eager to take in. This constitutes the true process,

the electric line; this the expeditious preaching, and is likely to prove the potently missionary preaching.

4. We come now to a fourth step or statement. Preaching of the kind we are considering is, in the first place, promulging. Secondly, As being preaching with the obtrusive and implanting intent, it is with a brief and somewhat rude rhetoric. Thirdly, It is attesting and thus has the effect of proving. Fourthly, It is dispensing. The condition of effectiveness, in one particular, is the power of a bold, outstanding rhetoric; in another, it is the indwelling of a profound, experimental assurance; in a third particular, it is the actual and large possession of the gospel. In other words, the effectual preaching is the generously dispensing. Paul, as he was at Ephesus, may illustrate. He was, when there, so surcharged with the miraculous potency, that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons; and health and life were diffused. The same thing, I love to think, held spiritually; and it was the gospel in Paul, so opulently and massively in him, that constituted largely, in his case, the wonderfully productive preaching force; not in him merely as assured truth, and to go from him in some form of resistless demonstration; in him rather as a resource and wealth of blessing, as a divine treasury of good, as a fountain of saving efficacy. I do not give to the servant the prerogative of the Master. But I do conceive of the servant, under the flowing of the Master, as taking in quantity, as largely possessing gospel; and then, in the uttering, pouring it out as a power of salvation. It goes from him, because it is so richly within him. As Peter said, What I have, give I

thee; and it was a more enduring substance than silver and gold.

There is a mystery in these transmissions from mind to mind, from preacher to his hearers. It is not thought, opinion, argument, merely, he conveys. In all instances of commanding effect, it is of the nature of substance, and seems to act almost as a physical property, and yet finely ethereal. It wells up, and pours abroad, crowding, as it goes, every avenue and every possible egress, limbs, eyes, mouth, every feature; letting forth, as it were, a diffused substance of eloquence. It is by volume and quantity the man thus rules over us. Dr. Chalmers was a marked instance of this. A friend and countryman of his, in accounting for that almost unequalled sway he bore over other minds, refers to the activity and quantity of the affections, and all vital possessions. It was the massive earnestness of the man, which worked hugely within, and worked out in expression, through all the openings; and so he seized you, overbore you, held you at his will: and by some commonplace truth, made grand by his imagination and bathed in his passion; by an intrepid iteration and a cumulative insistance, he wrought the saving decision and action in the souls of many. On other rostrums this may be a sort of magnetic quantity. In the preaching place, it should be, and sometimes has been, gospel quantity, gospel wrought within, by experience, by faith's appropriations, into large and benignant possession. This resource of efficacy we all may have. If we have it, we receive it from the fountain above. It is the gift of God; at once a palpable instrument, a very substance of power, the means exhaustless of blessing and saving.

It comes very obvious to remark,-first, in the way of inference, that, in respect to high pulpit power, we see in what direction it lies; namely, in the inner spiritual enduing, not in the external adjustments and accomplishments. 2. We see, secondly, how great is our liability, how strong is our tendency in the wrong direction; namely, to the externals. We come to regard preaching as a profession. We cultivate the humanities. We get steeped in the literatures; are trained to the peculiarities and niceties of style, — grow partial to the novel modes, phrases, expressions, and use them. Thus we carry away the religious discourse from the unalterable conditions. of a large effect. Preaching does not lie, it never can lie, in these æsthetic conditions. The entire history of the Church, the failures and the successes in preaching, alike show this. Go back to that passage of more than a century ago, when the Wesleys and their co-workers broke in upon the broad, stagnant calm, the all but universal sleep of death, in the English Church. They took one great truth, Ye must be born again, took it as life and reality into their own souls; and with a few coarse words they spoke it, and it shook like the trump of resurrection. And, as they went abroad, hurling this one truth, Ye must be born again, hurling it, in ungainly phrase, against the roughest and stoutest souls, souls turned by myriads, demonstrating by their turning the might of the truth and the mode. We have something of the like in our day, both in our own country and in England, a style and spirit unusual, a palpable handling of truth, and a veritable pulling at souls, as though these persons believed them literally dropping