It is a curious sign of the times—the contrast between what exists now and what existed then—as regards theological speculation. We are now sublimely indifferent whether a preacher is orthodox or the reverse, whatever that may mean, so long as we feel his utterances are helpful in the way of Christian work and life. It was not so fifty years ago. Ministers scanned their brethren in the ministry severely, and the deacon, with his Matthew Henry and Doddridge, sat grimly in his pew, eager to note the deflection of the preacher in the pulpit from the strait and narrow line of orthodoxy, and to glow with unholy zeal as he found him missing his footing on the tight-rope. In London there was such a man in the shape of Thomas Binney, who had come from the Isle of Wight to the King’s Weigh House Chapel, now swept away by the underground railway just opposite the Monument. Binney was a king among men, standing head and shoulders above his fellows. All that was intelligent in Dissenting London, among the young men especially, heard him gladly. Yet all over the land there were soulless deacons and crabbed old parsons, whose testimony no man regarded, who said Binney was not orthodox. He lived long enough to trample that charge down. He lived to see the new era when men, sick of orthodoxy, hailed any utterance from whatever quarter, so that it were God-fearing and sincere. As you listened to Binney struggling to evolve his message out of his inner consciousness, you felt that you stood in the presence of a man who dwelt in the Divine presence, to whom God had revealed Himself, whose eye could detect the sham, and whose hot indignation was terrible to listen to.