Some may sneer and scoff at his "deadly notions" and "perverted thoughts," but in his demand for personal life, development of conscience, and attainment in righteousness, his ministry is potent; its inspiration is constant. He believes and preaches only those truths which are possible to rational belief. With that exquisite instinct which characterizes all his thinking, he places, as if he were in apostolic succession, man's greatest need in coming to himself and in making religion inseparable from personal thought and character. Mr. Savage holds this forth as man's paramount task, to refuse which is alone to be faithless and hopeless and unforgiven. His idea of religion consists in nothing external or formal; nothing can avail with him but the culture of the soul and the quiet discharge of duty. It is his superlative merit that he enables one to feel his own capacity of thought as a positive and independent efficacy, and to rest upon the authority of his own conscience as the hope of glory and as a coördinating power with Holy Writ. He makes a broad survey of human nature, and commands men to traverse the whole range of their being and to call themselves to rigid account until the germs of moral debility are cast out of the heart. Man is not to waste his energies in grasping the immense and misty proportions of the beliefs of this or that traditionist or minute systems to which souls are often bent in unwilling conformity. The object of his ministry is to summon men to reckon with themselves every day, and to regenerate themselves by right thinking and by deeds of piety. In his opinion each person is a spiritual agency, a marvellous display of divine power and goodness, not only in the majesty of the truth which he apprehends, but in the dignity of the life which he may live. Temptation may open its alluring paths, evil may solicit us, sin may lead us astray, sorrow may drag us down; yet they need not. His public ministry is devoted to the infusion of this better sentiment,--that man is not the mere victim of circumstances, the necessary prey of temptation, or the helpless subject of wrong; that he need not contemplate life in indolent despair, but may check the dominion of sin and impurity, rise above not only intemperate indulgence, but every intemperate desire and impulse, and form dispositions of peculiar excellence, of original strength and beauty. Mr. Savage's ministry, then, is full of truth and power. It is strongly personal and ethical. There is no abler advocate of this important truth and master-word of the Gospel and of religion. It is a divine truth ever working in him, breaking into utterances, and giving to his beliefs and his life the highest dignity. With him it is a persistent and overwhelming duty to give to his ministry this practical content, this ethical intensity. In this he is evangelical.