ed the fierce spirits of the city, and Antioch was saved. It was
certainly a sublime spectacle to see a simple priest, unclothed even
with episcopal functions, surrounded for weeks by the entire population
of a great city, ready to obey his word, and looking to him alone as
their deliverer from temporal calamities, as well as their guide in
fleeing from the wrath to come.

And here we have a noted example of the power as well as the dignity of
the pulpit,--a power which never passed away even in ages of
superstition, never disdained by abbots or prelates or popes in the
plenitude of their secular magnificence (as we know from the sermons of
Gregory and Bernard); a sacred force even in the hands of monks, as when
Savonarola ruled the city of Florence, and Bourdaloue awed the court of
France; but a still greater force among the Reformers, like Luther and
Knox and Latimer, yea in all the crises and changes of both the Catholic
and Protestant churches; and not to be disdained even in our utilitarian
times, when from more than two hundred thousand pulpits in various
countries of Christendom, every Sunday, there go forth voices, weak or
strong, from gifted or from shallow men, urging upon the people their
duties, and presenting to them the hopes of the life to come. Oh, what a
power is this! How few realize its greatness, as a whole! What a power
it is, even in its weaker forms, when the clergy abdicate their
prerogatives and turn themselves into lecturers, or bury themselves in
liturgies! But when they preach without egotism or vanity, scorning
sensationalism and vulgarity and cant, and falling back on the great
truths which save the world, then sacredness is added to dignity. And
especially when the preacher is fearless and earnest, declaring most
momentous truths, and to people who respond in their hearts to those
truths, who are filled with the same enthusiasm as he is himself, and
who catch eagerly his words of life, and follow his directions as if he
were indeed a messenger of Jehovah,--then I know of no moral power which
can be compared with the pulpit. Worldly men talk of the power of the
press, and it is indeed an influence not to be disdained,--it is a great
leaven; but the teachings of its writers, when not superficial, are
contradictory, and are often mere echoes of public sentiment in
reference to mere passing movements and fashions and politics and
spoils. But the declarations of the clergy, for the most part, ar