notable minister of
the last generation in the Highlands of Scotland, Mr. Sage of Resolis,
there is a criticism recorded, which was passed by a parishioner on
three successive ministers of a certain parish: "Our first minister,"
said he, "was a man, but he was not a minister; our second was a
minister, but he was not a man; and the one we have at present is
neither a man nor a minister."

There is no demand which people make more imperatively in our day than
that their minister should be a man. It is not long since a minister
was certain of being honoured simply because he belonged to the
clerical profession and wore the clerical garb. People, as the saying
was, respected his cloth. But ours is a democratic age, and that state
of public feeling is passing away. There is no lack of respect,
indeed, for ministers who are worthy of the name; perhaps there is
more of it than ever. But it is not given now to clerical pretensions,
but only to proved merit. People do not now respect the cloth, unless
they find a man inside it.

Perhaps the educational preparation through which we pass at college
is not too favourable to this kind of power. In the process of cutting
and polishing the natural size of the diamond runs the risk of being
reduced. When we are all passed through the same mill, we are apt to
come out too much alike. A man ought to be himself. Your Emerson
preached this doctrine with indefatigable eloquence. Perhaps he
exaggerated it; but it is a true doctrine; and it is emphatically a
doctrine for preachers. What an audience looks for, before everything
else, in the texture of a sermon is the bloodstreak of experience; and
truth is doubly and trebly true when it comes from a man who speaks as
if he had learned it by his own work and suffering.

It will generally be noticed in any man who makes a distinct mark as a
preacher that there is in his composition some peculiarity of
endowment or attainment on which he has learned to rely. It may be an
emotional tenderness as in McCheyne, or a moral intensity as in
Robertson of Brighton, or intellectual subtlety as in Candlish, or
psychological insight as in Beecher. But something distinctive there
must be, and, therefore, one of the wisest of rules is, Cultivate your
strong side.

But what tells most of all is the personality as a whole. This is one
of the prime elements in preaching. The effect of a sermon depends,
first of all, on what is said, and next, on how it is