hand." Some one has said that men would be happy if it were not for
their pleasures, and the saying contains a profound truth. In this
unhappiness they turn to see if, peradventure, the preacher can show
them higher and clearer heights of joy. Sometimes, thank God! the
vision splendid is spread before them. It is a vision no poet or
painter, save such as have been to the springs of the Eternal, can
depict, and if the glory of it find its way into the seeker's soul life
for him is never the same again. But sometimes, alas! he is
disappointed. The voice in the pulpit is little more than a
sanctimonious echo of the voices of the street. Then goes the
sorrowing seeker hence, and lo, the tiny glimmer of hope with which he
came has all but been put out!

For it is a criticism one all too often hears, that the modern
preacher, instead of asking too much, asks too little, and that, when
he _does_ ask for much, his asking is more for great faith than for
great living from both the individual and the age. It has been
remarked that almost the whole of the difference between the Christian
preacher and the heathen moralist is expressed in the statement that
the preacher adds to his teaching a flavour of Jewish history and
sweetens with the promise of a future life. Otherwise the heathen
moralist points as far up the mountain side as he. There is such a
possibility as that of preaching along too low a level. It is an ill
thing when the preacher becomes content with the straw and forgets the
crown.

For the preacher like the rest of men may become enslaved to things and
powers material. "Where there is no vision the people perish," and of
vision, in the larger sense, the preacher may share the general
poverty. After all, even he belongs to the age into which he was born,
and it needs qualities that are none too common to resist the
influences of the times and of environment. Beside all this, are there
not personal experiences in the lives of all of us which make it hard
to keep our eyes upon the stars? We think of the local preacher
spending his week in the market or behind the counter, in office or
mine or factory or in the field wrestling with Nature for the bread
that perisheth. We think of the minister often worried, almost
distracted, by "the care of the churches," by the crabbed foolishness
and miserable jealousies of contentious men and women. We must
remember that for many a preacher life is not a May Day