ws with its brightest bloom. Perhaps
the resolution might take such a form as this:--_Resolved: Never to
preach a hard sermon when I feel like doing so_.

All this is no fancy picture, and the peril indicated is not imaginary
but real. The story of Jonah is left to all time for the warning of
the preacher. Seated yonder in his booth, biting his nails in
vexation, he is the type of the preacher whose righteous indignation,
because of its lack of that element of unselfishness, and that spirit
of pity by which moral anger should always be qualified, becomes simply
grim and merciless wrath. "Doest thou well to be angry?" the eternal
voice asks of him and of all who follow in his prophetic line. It was
not thus that Jesus looked upon the multitude. They despised Him--many
of them. That He knew. They accused and slandered Him one to another
and in their own secret hearts. Some of them said He was a glutton and
a wine-bibber, others that He had a devil, others, again, that He was
the friend of publicans and sinners. They ate His bread, accepted His
healing kindness, and all the time were making ready to cry, "Not this
man, but Barabbas," when opportunity should arise. All this He
understood, but "when He saw the multitudes He was moved with
compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as
sheep having no shepherd."

"All His words are music,
Though they make me weep,
Infinitely tender,
Infinitely deep."

And the absence of this undertone of pity from the message of the
preacher always destroys the effect of his warnings and causes the
hearer to be less afraid than angry, as is always the case when men are
captiously scolded and found fault with and threatened. On the other
hand, its presence gives power and penetration to the terrors borne
upon its breath. It is instinctively felt that the hard words of the
preacher are spoken as by one who weeps before he speaks. He does but
speak because he must, because it would be cruellest cruelty to be
silent. "For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace." "Zion's
sake"--here, then, is the motive of all this unfolding of the secret
history of the hearer's heart and life. From very pity this man cannot
speak of health when he sees the canker in the rose which blooms upon
the cheek, when he perceives that, despite the appearance of strength
and vigour, "the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint." He has
not told us pleasant thin