as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It is wanting in adaptation, in that sense to which we give the phrase of " up with the times," and, in illustration, in that sense in which truth should be illustrated by the things of the present with which men's thoughts are familiar.

Our Saviour's parables illustrate the careful reference he always had in his teaching to the principle just named. We will attempt to illustrate what we mean by an illustration that particularly interests, because it includes what I was before in the mind of the hearer. Is the operation of the Divine Spirit, for instance, upon man's moral nature, changing the disposition thereof, objected to, on account of its inconceivableness or profound mystery? Let the force of the objection be broken by an analogy from the natural world. How happens it, the speaker may say, that light, the most imponderable and subtle of all substances, reveals its red in the rose, its white in the lily, its blue in the violet, compounds itself into every hue of beauty in the pride of spring, and stains with vermilion or silvery whiteness the clouds of the sky? Who can conceive of this process, and yet, who dare deny the facts? And these facts become the more striking, when it is remembered that

the virgin petals of the lily of to-day, were yesterday but the mud of the swamp. Or, take another illustration from the wondrous doings of that most incomprehensible of physical agents, electricity. Its wonders have now become familiar to the minds of everybody. And, that it does traverse a continent, or an ocean, in a time too short for measurement; that it pervades with unimpeded ease, huge masses of iron; that it drops through mountains of rock with infinitely more ease than our volition can move us through an open door, are all facts which a school-boy, now, does not think of denying. But these are but physical agents, producing visible and wonderful results. To discard them, because the manner in which it is done lies beyond the power of our analysis, or comprehension, would be worse than stupidity. But if such things are true of natural agents, what are we not to expect of spiritual agents? If matter does thus operate upon matter, is it unreasonable to suppose that mind may not so operate upon mind as to produce phenomena correspondingly wonderful? And who does not know that it is but an experimental fact, that even finite mind does influence mind with a transforming power often nearly analogous to

that which natural agents produce before our eyes in the opening bud. But, if we rise from the mind of man to the mind of God, from the spirit of man to the Spirit of God, and presume upon the possibility of an intercourse between God and man, what results does it become most reasonable for us to look for? Why, that our minds be purified, renewed, born again, transformed in their measure into the Divine likeness --these, we say, are the results which a legitimate rationalism would look for. Certainly it is not unreasonable to suppose that the mind of God and man may be brought into contact, when the Spirit of God, like an all-pervasive life, touches everything in the vast universe. It is, then, but sheer atheism to laugh at spiritual regeneration as a mere dogma of the Church, discarded by true philosophy; while it is worse than childish to object to anything taught in the Scriptural experience of the Christian because of its mystery or incomprehensibility!

Now, in some such way as the above, would we have the pulpit in its lessons, more immediately logical and illustrative, address the popular mind. We would have the pulpit commune no less with the cross, but at the same time

The

much more with those "all things which were
made by Him" the Victim of the cross.
pulpit should abound more with illustrations
fresh from the fountain of nature. The preach-
er should study nature only second to revelation.
The facts of natural science should be as famil-
iar to him as the facts of Bible history.

"Read nature: nature is a friend to truth;
Nature is Christian, preaches to mankind,
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed."

It is not a lack of Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, that constitutes a scientific want of the pulpit, by any means, but a want of a knowledge of the natural sciences does; and in no apologetic spirit or tone, would we have the duty discharged. That is, we would not have the pulpit defer, for a moment, to that infidelity that secretly, if not avowedly, challenges these spiritual verities. But we would have it demonstrated that these spiritual verities are actually the highest type of a legitimate rationalism. Such a coming at the mind, we think, would excite thought, and while the word was preached, it would also be expounded in a manner which gathered freshness from the living present. We think, if we mistake not, that

the pulpit must swing itself loose more from the technical and the obsolete, in this momentous department of theology. But, by all means, let it not degenerate into a mere scholarly exhibition of scientific facts, though important they may be in the illustration of the holy record. Let not preaching degenerate into philosophizing, but let philosophy ever keep her place as a servant. The messenger of the pulpit has mistaken his mission whenever he presumes it is primarily an intellectual one. Effort should be made always to move the heart, always to stir the affections, always to awaken deep emotions in alliance with spiritual truths. Were we on a hymeneal errand, on a courting excursion, we would as soon pay our addresses to Powers's statue of the Greek slave, as an excitant of our affections, as to go to church and hear nothing but a purely scientific and intellectual harangue. Intellect, of course, must be there, otherwise the sermon is wanting in intelligence. Science, of course, must be there, otherwise we are annoyed with the blunders of the speaker. But these are but the scaffolding of the builder. There must be life, the life of emotion occasioned by the speaker's communion with God. The Holy Ghost must be