be more work to show for the coal consumed.[37] 4. Allow me, gentlemen, in closing this lecture, to emphasize another sense in which the prophets were men of the Word, and in which they are worthy of imitation. They were masters of the Written Word. They not only spoke the word of God, but wrote it for publication, in a form sometimes more diffuse and sometimes more compressed than their oral utterances; and by this means they not only extended their influence in their own day, but have enormously prolonged it since. It is surprising how few of those who have spoken the word of God have cultivated this mode of delivering it; and it is perhaps equally astonishing how few of those who have cultivated it have done so in earnest. In the last century, promotion in the Church of England was won by literary achievement; but the would-be bishop did not generally think of religious literature: he published a political pamphlet or edited a Greek play. Among the Scottish Moderates there was a keen ambition for literary distinction; but it was the more prized the more remote the fields in which it was won lay from a minister's peculiar work. This led the Evangelicals to discountenance literary productivity, which they regarded as springing from unholy motives and as likely to distract the mind from the true ends of the ministry. But surely there is a juster point of view than either the Moderate or the Evangelical. This work ought to be cultivated with precisely the same aims as preaching and with the same earnestness. When a man is truly called to it, it brings a vast audience within his range, and there may rest on it a remarkable blessing. Here is a significant extract from the history of British Christianity: Richard Baxter wrote _A Call to the Unconverted_, and Philip Doddridge was converted by reading it; Philip Doddridge wrote _The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul_, and William Wilberforce was converted by reading it; Wilberforce wrote the _Practical View_, and Thomas Chalmers was converted by reading it. What a far-extending influence does each of these names represent! The writing of books is perhaps the likeliest of all avenues by which to carry religious influence to the most select minds. FOOTNOTES: [23] The Servant of the Lord is a prophet; and in the descriptions of him in this character we can perhaps best see what was Isaiah's conception of a prophet. See especially ch. lxi. 1-3. [24] See Ewald's Introduction to _The Prophets_. [25] "Bonorum ingeniorum insignis est indoles, in verbis verum amare, non verba. Quid enim prodest clavis aurea, si aperire quod volumus non potest? Aut quid obest lignea, si hoc potest, quando nihil quaerimus, nisi parere quod clausum est? Sed quoniam inter se habent nonnullam similitudinem vescentes atque discentes, propter fastidia plurimorum etiam ipsa sine quibus vivi non potest alimenta condienda sunt."--ST. AUGUSTINE. [26] See the excellent chapter on Isaiah's style in Driver's _Isaiah_.