no application and no meaning
outside the human heart and that which is above, not beneath, the
human heart, from which it is derived. There, then, again was the
supernatural law; there was the more-than-nature in man which makes
nature into human nature; and there is the thing to whose discovery,
cultivation, expression, real preaching is addressed. Every time a man
truly preaches he so portrays what men ought to be, must be, and can
be if they will, that they know there is something here

"that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven!
A seed of sunshine that doth leaven
Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars,
And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the Day."[32]

[Footnote 32: J.R. Lowell, _Commemoration Ode_, stanza IV, ll. 30-35.]

Such preaching is a perpetual refutation of and rebuke to the
naturalism and imperialism of our present society. It is the call
to the absolute in man, to a clear issue with evil. It would not cry
peace, peace, when there is no peace. It would be living and active,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of
both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of
the heart.

Following this insistence upon the difference from nature, the
more-than-natural in man, the second thing in religious preaching
will have to be, obviously, the message of salvation. That is to say,
reducing the statement to its lowest terms, if man is to live by such
a law, the law of more-than-nature, then he must have something also
more-than-human to help him in his task. He will need strength from
outside. Indeed, because religion declares that there is such divine
assistance, and that faith can command it, is the chief cause and
reason for our existence. When we cease to preach salvation in some
form or other, we deny our own selves; we efface our own existence.
For no one can preach the more-than-human in mankind without
emphasizing those elements of free will, moral responsibility, the
need and capacity for struggle and holiness in human life which it
indicates, and which in every age have been a part of the message of
Him who said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father, which is
in heaven, is perfect."

Therefore, as we have previously corrected the half truth of the
naturalist who makes a caricature, not a portrait of man, we must now
in the same way turn to the correctin