One of the most obvious lessons to be learned from a study of church history is a lesson teaching the necessity of the positive note in the pulpit. The great ages of Christianity have been those in which affirmation has been clear and definite and strong. The great preachers of the past have ever been positive preachers, men whose assurance concerning their message was heard in every tone of their voices, who knew in whom they had believed. Especially has this been true of those whose ministrations have been the means of great revivals of religion as seen in the awakening of zeal within the Church and the salvation of sinners. How positive were the Wesleys! How sure was Whitefield! How absolutely certain of things were the fathers of our own Church! How real to them were God and Jesus and Heaven and Hell. They were narrow, perhaps. Possibly they were often intolerant. It may have been the case that they were rather too ready to damn every one who disagreed with them as to the interpretation of the truth of God. They may not have always displayed a sweet and brotherly reluctance to brand as a heretic any person whose creed was a little more hopeful than their own. It might possibly be shown that there is some truth in the suggestion that they were not always able to render a reason for their convictions with an intelligence and a wealth of knowledge proportionate to the strength with which they held them. But they _did_ know where they were. They _could_ identify themselves among theologians. They were ready with a confession of faith. This is _so_, and _this_ and _this_, they could say. _That_ will come to pass, and _that_ and _that_, they affirmed, as if they saw it all enacted before them. The result of this strong believing was seen in the production of strong belief and, better still, of determined action in those to whom they preached; for belief is at least as infectious as doubt, as the records of spiritual movements and the biographies of religious leaders of all schools will prove. There was no theorising in those camp-meeting sermons to which the people of this land were listening a hundred years ago; no "honest doubt" in those invitations heard upon the greens of the villages and in the market-places of the towns while yet the last century was young. Here were preachers as sure of their message as they were of their own existence. Of "mental reservations" they knew nothing. They had never even heard the term. They dealt in "wills" and "shalls"; not in "peradventures" or "maybes." They said of a thing "it is" or "it is not." They went up into such pulpits as they possessed, not to conduct a public inquiry after truth, but to declare it. They were not out in search of a gospel adapted to the needs of the age. They had found the one sure way of life adapted to this and every other time. This they cried aloud, and then lifting up their voices in song, "Turn to the Lord and seek salvation," they