Behind such preaching as this, and producing the passion out of which it will proceed, there must be high experiences of grace. Such passion can only proceed from a personal knowledge of Christ and from that full surrender which such knowledge at once brings to pass. Love has caught the preacher in the way and led him to Calvary, where his heart has been set on fire. He does but preach because he must, the Lord having done for him such mighty things. As the memory of that divine arrest on the road to Damascus abode with Paul, and so sustained a sense of the mercy of his Lord that he could not help but preach the gospel, so the recollection of the preacher will ever linger around the glad hour when the Master met him in the path, having come down from heaven to seek and to save even him. In these remembrances has the passion of the preacher its origin and its reinforcement. It is the first fruit of a melted heart. The true preacher is--the word is not a pleasant one, but it is the only form of expression that, at the moment, occurs--the devotee. He is the slave of love to Christ. And without this whole-souled devotion--we say again--there can be no great moving and saving preaching. Eloquence there may be, intellectualism, sublimity of conception and description, pathos--all the qualities which are needed in high public address, but something will be lacking. None can speak of a maiden as can her lover, though others may describe her with a choicer diction than he. None can speak of a child as can his mother, to whom the little life is more precious than her own and every childish way of significance and beauty. "_Lovest_ thou _Me_?" said the Lord to Simon Peter on that grey morning on the sea-shore. "Lovest thou Me?" He asked again, and yet again. "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee," cried the disciple, his soul aflame with a living passion never more to be extinguished or bedimmed, "Thou knowest that I love Thee." Then said the Saviour, "Feed My sheep," "Feed My lambs." Peter's preaching hour was come now that this fire had been kindled in his soul. In that confession rang the promise of all the after years, of the ministry in Jerusalem, of his declaration of the Christ in many a heathen city, of the death he was to die in Rome. Lack this flame of affection and preaching will be a task, a penance, a weary iteration and reiteration of things so often spoken as to render them threadbare and hackneyed to the speaker. Possess this all-consuming love and preaching will be as "a song of the Well-Beloved!"