The same spiritual laws as regulate the experience of every saint of God regulate those of the preacher. His Sabbath note will be according to his week-day living. Let him be all the week absorbed in material things only; let him seek only his own gratification, only his own wealth or pleasure or advantage; let him walk only in the lower paths, and he must not be surprised if, as he stands up upon the Sabbath, his voice be found to have lost the old ring of joyful and glorious assertion. He must not be astonished if his grasp of heavenly mysteries and promises and provisions be slack, and if, as a result, he speaks in halting tones. If his daily walk be far from the side of his Lord, he must not wonder if other spirits find their way to his ear and fill it with whispers of doubt and fear which make his testimony hesitant and of small effect for good. We say he must not be surprised at these things. No, nor must he find the reasons for this weakening of his faith in the message itself, though that will inevitably be the chief temptation of such dangerous hours. He should ask first concerning the life he is living, whether it is of a sort to make faith an easy thing. He should ask concerning his personal observance of the Master's counsel of prayer and self-denial and cross-bearing. It is pleasanter, no doubt, to seek the reasons for one's unbelief in intellectual than in moral directions. The former method may flatter us a little; the latter is often very painful! And yet by inquiring as to our moral condition the whole secret will often be discovered. There is also another question to ask:--If we understand the promises of our Lord, in even a slight degree, He gives to all whom He calls into the holy ministry the assurance of a Comforter who will guide them into all truth, and bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever He has said. Are we quite able, we who are afflicted with doubts which sometimes make it hard to preach, are we quite able to say that we have honoured Him in putting His promises to the proof as we might have done? Was not one of the Master's words to us "It shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak"? There was no uncertainty in the Upper Room in that glad but awful moment when the pledge of the ages was fulfilled to the children of the new and better covenant. Let us seek that experience again. Let us begin our quest at the cross, with a prayer for forgiveness, and a vow of reconsecration. Let us wait upon Him for a renewal of that divine outpouring of which He has never disappointed His chosen messengers when they have sought it at His hand, meanwhile denying themselves, taking up their cross and following Him. Let us but obtain that baptism, and all our crippling and alarming scepticisms will vanish, and the full round tone of fearless confidence return. Such a return is the need of the present hour--spiritual certainty in an age of materialism, the one sure antidote for all its cares.