end one day, "and I am tired
and disappointed. I went to hear a sermon and I listened to a lecture.

"I went to worship and I was merely entertained.

"The preacher was a brilliant man and his address was an intellectual
treat; but I did not go to church to hear a professional lecturer.
When I want merely to be entertained I will go to the theater.

"But I do not like to hear a preacher principally try to be either
orator or artist. I am pleased if he is both; but before everything
else I want him to bear _me_ the Master's message. I want the minister
to preach Christ and Him crucified."

The man who said this was a journalist of ripe years, highly educated,
widely experienced, acquainted with men and life. He was world-weary
with that weariness which comes of the journalist's incessant contact
with every phase of human activity, good and bad, great and small.

For no man touches life at so many points and is both so rich in and
worn by human experiences as the newspaper man in daily service. And I
have found that this expression of the wise old man of the press whom
I have quoted fairly reflects a general feeling among men of all other
classes.

First, then, young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you
to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel. It does not
expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or
witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the
tongues of men. The world will be glad if you are all of these, of
course; but it wants you to be a preacher of the Word before anything
else. It expects that all your talents will be consecrated to your
sacred calling.

It expects you to speak to the heart, as well as to the understanding,
of men and women, of the high things of faith, of the deep things of
life and death. The great world of worn and weary humanity wants from
the Pulpit that word of helpfulness and power and peace which is
spoken only by him who has utterly forgotten all things except his
holy mission. Therefore merge all of your striking qualities into the
divine purpose of which you are the agent. Lose consciousness of
yourself in the burning consciousness of your cause.

Very well; but if you do that you must be very sure of your own
belief. Any man who assumes to teach the Christian faith, who in his
own secret heart questions that faith himself, commits a sacrilege
every time he enters the pulpit.

Can it be that the lack of