The Christian preacher is not only the accuser of men and the ambassador of reconciliation; he is also the Prophet of a new order. "Go, preach, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," so runs his commission. His message must convey more than the promise of a deliverance from the _consequences_ of sin. It must proclaim new possibilities for the individual. It must point to higher altitudes for the race. The preacher announces a New Jerusalem descending out of heaven. His ministry is not to lead to the better only, but to the best. For such preaching as this there is, deep down in the heart of man, a great hunger and thirst. Sordid and materialistic as is the life of the age, engrossed as the multitudes appear to be in the pursuit of mammon, of vain glory and of pleasure, there still lingers in the human breast a suspicion that men were fashioned for something higher than the things that, so often, first engross and then exhaust their powers. The millionaire is not satisfied with his millions and, of late, has told us so. The man of pleasure is not satisfied with his pleasures, and, when he unburdens his secret mind, confesses his disappointment and disgust. Corn, wine and oil, houses, lands and station are all the objects of loathing as well as of pursuit, to those who, having won them, have found out their real quality. It is a primal instinct of the race that "the life is more than meat and the body than raiment." To the student of our times there is nothing more pathetic than to observe the struggles of those upon whom materialism casts its spell to escape from their bondage. To aid them in this endeavour they call the painter, the sculptor, the dramatist, the man of letters, the player skilled in the language of music, and to one and all they say, "Idealise! Idealise!" Periods of realism in art never last long, though, in a sense, realism is easier to the artist than idealism. The explanation is that it is not realism that is really in demand. The artist must give us not man as he is, but as he _ought_ to be; not life as we know it, but life as we _would_ know it and live it, too; not the human face scarred and seamed by vices inherited from a thousand tainted years, but fresh, and sweet, and beautiful as it came from the hands of God, new washed in the dews of His infinite affection. Even nature must be idealised, and the painter struggles to produce the perfect landscape, the sculptor to represent the perfect form. The artist who mixes no imagination with his colours never holds for long the public honour. The heart of man asks for the ideal; the actual is not enough.