Mr. Brown’s settlement at Clayland’s Chapel has been successful. The cause—to borrow the conventional phrase—has prospered; the chapel has been filled, and the church has considerably increased. His fame has grown. He has become a man of note. At Exeter Hall his voice is often heard. Undoubtedly some of his success is due to the circumstances I have already mentioned, but undoubtedly the greater part of it is due to himself alone. It is something for a man to find a position already made for him. It saves him many a year of herculean and unregarded toil; but to keep a position is almost as difficult as to make it, and this Mr. Brown has succeeded in doing. The reason of this must be sought for in Mr. Brown himself. The man must have some speciality to fit him for his work, or he cannot be successful in it. That Mr. Brown has this is, I take it, beyond a doubt; nor can you long attend upon his ministry without finding such is the case. Mr. Brown’s distinguishing characteristic is freshness. There is nothing stale or conventional about him. He evidently preaches what he thinks. His speech is a living speech, not a monotonous repetition of old divinity. He has wandered out of the conventional circle. He has come in contact with great minds. He has had a richer experience than generally falls to the lot of the divine. He views things broadly and in a manly manner, not from the narrow platform of a sect. His faith is a living one. His Christianity is practical—that by which men may shape their life as well as square their creed. Instead of wandering weakly and sentimentally in other lands and in other ages, he brings his mind and heart to bear upon the realities of the present day. The questions of our age, not of past ages, he discusses in his pulpit. The day that passes over him is the day to which he devotes his energies. He gives you an idea of earnestness and activity and independence—of a mind well educated and drawn out—filled with Christian truth, and earnest in the application of that truth. He is not a great rhetorician—his strength seems to be in his common sense. If the Bible be true, the sooner man gets that idea into his head and acts according to it, the better. If man have to obey the Divine law, the sooner he submits himself to it the happier he will be in this life as well as in that which is to come. I know there is nothing new in this,—that other men attempt to teach the same thing,—that all divines are saying it one way or another every Sunday; but the merit of Mr. Brown is that he says it as a man of common-sense would say it to men possessed of common-sense—that he does not wrap his meaning in the unreal verbiage of a mystic and unreal theology—that he takes his teachings, and arguments, and illustrations from real life—and that he talks of religion as men of the world of consols and railways; and no man can do this, to whom religion is not the business of his life. In