For what is the Christian preacher? He is the very messenger of Jesus Christ to men. He belongs to an order founded and recruited by the Master Himself. First He sent out "the seventy," who probably soon returned; afterwards He sent forth "the twelve," armed with a permanent commission. When, in the ranks of this early band, a vacancy arose through the unfaithfulness of one of its members, He made choice of another. From the opened skies He arrested Saul in his journey to Damascus that he might be a chosen vessel to bear the truth to the Gentiles. From that day to this He has been calling and sending, not less really, a succession of men every one of whom might with Paul have called himself an ambassador of the King of Kings. Of course there were preachers before the apostles and there was preaching before Pentecost. The prophets were preachers, and mighty was their proclamation of the divine message--so mighty that though addressed primarily to their contemporaries it lives and burns to-day. Later, in the period lying between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, there were notable preachers in Israel who kept alive the Messianic hope and sought to "prepare the way of the Lord and make His paths straight." There was preaching in the synagogues in our Lord's own day, and He but observed an established custom when, "entering into the synagogue" at Nazareth, as was His practice "on the Sabbath day," "He stood up for to read," and "there was brought unto Him the book of the Prophet Esaias." He had a text that day, and He preached from it, and, if the end of His discourse was that He was thrust out of the synagogue and was like to have been put to death, it was because of the unwelcomeness of the word He spoke, and not because He had introduced a new order of service into the sanctuary of an intensely conservative people. He preached in the synagogues of Capernaum, too, "and they were astonished at His doctrine, for the word was with power." John the Baptist was a preacher who was more than a prophet, and to his preaching doubtless the Lord Himself listened more than once. "And John began to say unto men everywhere repent." Such seems to have been the burden of his message until that hour when he suddenly found his sweetest music and cried "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Yes, there were preachers before Christ, and long previous to His coming "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching" to save them that believed. Jesus, however, gave to the order of the preacher a new institution. He put upon the lips of His servants a new message. They were to go, no longer to the children of one favoured nation only, but "out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." From all classes did He gather the men upon whom He put this glorious burden. Here was a fisherman fresh from his toil upon the deep; here a publican newly come up from the receipt of