The agitators and reformers are very ready to see the dwarfing effect of a single idea or a single range of ideas upon the Christian ministry, and a large number of Christian men. I admit the accuracy of their observations in this matter, and, admitting this, I can certainly ask the question whether they hope to escape depreciation when the Christian idea--the divinest of all---is insufficient of itself to make a man, and fill him, and give him all desirable health and wealth and growth. As I have touched upon this point, I may say that it is coming to be understood that a man or a minister, in order to be a Christian, must be something else--that Christianity received into nature and life is only one of the elements of manhood--and that a man may become starved and mean and bigoted and essentially insane by feeding exclusively upon religion. What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and sanctimonious Christians--these poor, thin, stingy lives--but that all ideas save the religious one have been shut out from them? Is it not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively upon religion is a man without power upon the hearts and minds of men? Is it not true that he has most efficiency in pulpit ministration who has the largest knowledge of and sympathy with men, the broadest culture, and the widest acquaintance with all the ideas that enter as food and motive into human life? Is it not true that in the life-long, absorbing anxiety and carefulness of a multitude of souls to secure their salvation, those souls are constantly becoming less valuable, and thus--to use the language of the market--less worth saving? I cannot fail, however unwilling, to see much that is dry and stiff and unlovely in the style of Christianity around me. It has no attraction for me. I do not like the people who illustrate it; and the reason is, not that they have got too much of Christianity, but that they have not got enough of any thing else. Flour is good, but flour is not bread. If I am to eat flour, I must eat it as bread; and either milk or water must be used to make it bread. If a little milk is used, the bread will be dry and heavy and hard. If a good deal is used, the flour will be transformed into a soft and plastic mass, which will rise in the heat, and come to my lips a sweet and fragrant morsel. Christianity is good, but it wants mixing with humanity before it will have a practical value. If only a little humanity be mixed with it, the product will be dry and tasteless; but if it be combined with the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the result will be a loaf fit for the tongues of angels. No: the divinest idea that has yet been apprehended by the human mind is not enough for the human mind. That which God made to be fed by various food cannot be fed with success or safety by a single element. We cannot build a house of dry bricks. It takes lime and sand and water in their proper proportions to hold the bricks together.