been heathen can ever do, ridiculing the mud and wood of which men make images which look worse than they themselves do, which cannot even save themselves from sinking into the slime if he who worships hurls them there; and then looking up at the grand heavens, one of them said:-"HE who spread out, that is my SWAMMY" (LORD).

Everywhere the native women profess their faith in Jesus; they seek the identification with Christians that shall mark and keep them such. Against any opposition they hold to Christ; converted perhaps while they are betrothed to heathen boys, they undergo severity of persecution, even to death, rather than renounce their faith. They strip themselves of personal adornments that they may build their churches, support their native pastors-send to the heathen around them or far away, who have never heard it, the "good news" of God; they have organized societies among themselves, auxiliary to the Women's Societies, here, of which we are writing.

Does any one ask for the personal character which has been developed in these heathen women? Let it be answered, it is that wherein they wish above all else to be like the Divine Master, by compliance with all his words.

For illustration:-Two young men in a Bengali family became Christians, and were forbidden, therefore, to dwell at home, although occasionally permitted to visit home. Having taught one of their sisters to read, they gave her a copy of the Bible, which she studied in secret, until at length the Spirit of God opened the eyes of her understanding and she became a Christian. Seized with a mortal illness, she confessed her faith, and asked for the Scriptures which she had hidden. Placing them upon her head, she took water and sprinkling herself with it, said, "Oh, Lord Jesus! thou didst command those who love thee to be baptized. I am ignorant and know not how it should be done. But accept this my imperfect endeavor to fulfill thy commands." In a few minutes her life was closed . . . These are the petitions, faithfully translated, from the prayer of a Hindu widow. "Oh Lord! thou everlasting Father, my prayer to thee is, that I may keep thy commandments with my whole heart, and body, and daily growing in knowledge and righteousness, please thee. Thou husband of the widow

beside thee I have none in this world; beside thee I have no leader. Alas! I, being thy child, cannot keep thy commandments for a single hour, but remaining in this sinful world, have forgotten thee. Alas! He who is our life,-Him knowing we know not, and hearing we hear not. Give me thy Spirit, Lord, that he may enable me to think of thee. Lord of the world! let thy will be the will of the whole world; open thou the eyes of the blind and almost prisoned women of India. All this I ask for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen."

In what is already secured lies large hope in the future, for the world outside Christendom. Society cannot rise above the status of its individual members, and the agency for its resurrection which we have considered, is working upon the right persons. At last, those who shape society in immense portions of the earth, are themselves being moulded in the image of Him who is the supreme model. Not the present generation, perhaps no generation will speedily see its fulness; but the day has broken, "peace begins to settle on the air—the prison walls are giving way" in permanent reality and truth.

ARTICLE V.-FLIES IN THE OINTMENT.

In the history of Bunyan's religious experience he tells us that on one occasion he dreamed that he was near a high mountain occupied by good people, on whose sheltered sides the pleasant beams of the sun was shining, while he was shivering with the cold. Between him and the mountain a wall intervened, which he was quite unable to get over. This experience of the great dreamer has often been paralleled, we imagine, by those whose office it is to ascertain and fittingly set forth to their fellow men the truths contained in the Word. They stand at an enforced distance from the chosen text, dimly perceiving the thoughts profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, which a correct unfolding would reveal; and if, perchance, on some clear morning like that on which Christian saw the towers of the celestial city, the preacher is favored with a sight of the truth in its fair proportions, he is in great danger of marring or breaking the image in his endeavor to hold it up to the view of others. It is affecting to think of the extent to which sermons, good in their arrangement and in the truths they contain, are bereft of their power in the process of delivery. A faulty utterance eclipses enough of truth every year to save half a world. What crowds of beautiful thoughts every Sabbath are smothered in the mephitic air of an unappeas able whine. How often a discourse that belongs to the very nobility of thought is unrecognized in the unsightly garb in which it is presented. The river Danube, we are told, flows for hundreds of miles through a fertile country, with a depth of water sufficient to float large ships; but not a little of the wealth gathered from its banks and borne on its bosom is wrecked upon the sandbars that stretch across its mouths. No man can number the argosies of thought that yearly are stranded in the attempt to get them over the obstructions in our mouths.

The style of address adopted by many as the result of their studies leads to forms of expression not fitted to arrest attention.

Many discourses of great power, so far as the thought is concerned, are encased in such faultless, smooth-flowing periods as to glide over the minds of the hearers without leaving a trace. Along the thoroughfares of thought they pass as harmlessly as a load of fixed ammunition. This often arises from adopting the style of thought and method of address employed by others at the expense of their own individuality. The first preachers of the gospel felt that they could fulfill the last command of their Lord by imparting to others what he had made known to them. Their message was made up of the things they had seen, of the words they had heard, of the fulness of the grace received from loving companionship with their Lord; but while seeing in substance all things alike, their utterances vary with their dif fering temperaments and their individual peculiarities. Every truly effective preacher since their day has become so by essentially the same process. The truths he preaches are to him living verities. He has seen and handled of the word of life and imparts what has been communicated to him. But in doing this he retains his personality. The Divine Spirit employed the differing tastes and temperaments of the Evangelists for the harmonious yet differing records they have left. What one omitted secured the notice of another, and the work was well done by men who used the powers that were given them under the unconscious guidance of the Spirit. And so, when the true preacher reads Calvin or Wesley, he will assimilate, not aggregate, their thoughts. His true personality will grow by all that he feeds on, and his utterances will be his own, and in their shape and order will reflect his own individuality. He who adopts the words and manner of another will to that extent change from the living preacher to a machine. David in the armor of Saul has no power. There is an apparatus by which common air passed through certain substances becomes inflammable, and is used to light dwellings. But it is quite essential to the successful working of the process that the air be pure, i. e., that it retain all its constituent qualities unmixed with any others. In like manner he who would make full proof of the ministry must secure it in the faithful employment of his own powers, impressed by the truth and impelled by the love of souls. To stretch beyond our measure is virtually to fall short of it. We not unfrequently see 44

VOL. XXXII.

those who have become bow-legged in running the way of God's commandments, from the vain endeavor to tread in the steps of some one who has gone that way before them.

We are confident that the power of the pulpit has been weakened by the low place we assign to extempore speaking. Pastors avail themselves of this mode of address on a rainy day, when none but the faithful are present, to save the sermon that was prepared for all the people. It is the unwilling resort when called upon suddenly, a temporary breast-work of brush and stones thrown up against the enemy. It is employed on occasions when things crude and weak may be said, and small talk allowed. Relatively to the written sermon, it occupies the place of the contribution box to the subscription paper, the receptacle for ready and small change. In the Midsummer Night's Dream, when the players are preparing for a rehearsal, one of them who was to act the lion's part requests that it may be handed to him, as he is slow of learning. The reply is, "You may speak your part extempore, for it is nothing but roaring." This opinion is still extensively cherished. Speaking without notes in the estimation of many is little else than roaring. But we are certain that the power of the pulpit would be greatly increased by this mode of address, and that even as practiced among us it is not seldom more effective than the more formal and studied utterances of the pulpit. The speaker freed from the constraint occasioned by his notes, "with heart and eyes and lifted hands" brings himself into sympathy with those whom he desires to benefit. If his words are less studied, they possess a warmth and power not found in the more formal utterance. Most men prefer warm meals, even when imperfectly cooked, to cold food, though spiced according to the latest French recipes.

Extempore speaking demands that the theme of discourse be fairly studied, and that the speaker so join himself to the audience as to feel the inspiration of their presence and manifested interest. The notes he consults must be the faces of the assembly. The associations of the place and the presence of those who have come to be benefited will be the willing servitors, to bring forth the treasures prepared for the occasion. If compelled at first to depend upon the thoughts especially prepared, he must at the earliest practicable moment forage for his sup