To the ordinary public the theological treatise is a sealed book. It is the preacher's duty to break that seal; to take out the dry truths stored there; to render them palatable and inviting, and bring them within the grasp of the plainest intelligence. [Side note: Solicitor and barrister] Few occupations more aptly illustrate this difference than those of solicitor and barrister. The attorney works up the materials for the case: he groups statutes, discovers principles, tabulates references, supplies dates. While he does not plead himself, a man so armed is invaluable at the elbow of an able advocate; without the barrister, however, especially where the prejudices, interests, and the imagination of a jury have to be worked upon, his load of learned lumber would be of small value. The theologian makes out the brief: the preacher pleads it. To render this distinction clearer let us take one more illustration. No animal can exist on air and clay and sunlight alone. Though these contain the elements on which it is fed; yet, though surrounded by them in most ample abundance, he must perish if a third power is not brought into play. The vegetable world comes intervening between the raw chemicals and the hungry man. Out of earth and air and light it builds the ripened sheaf, the succulent apple and the savoury potato. So, though bookshelves groan under calf-bound tomes hoarding the hived treasures of the masters of theology, the common minds of the multitude would starve did not the preacher interpose as interpreter of the theologian's message, drawing forth from his storehouse truths and principles out of which he manufactures the daily bread on which the ordinary man must live. Without his aid the richest repository ever clasped between the covers of a book would remain a _fons signatus a hortus conclusus_. The prophet of God saw the dry bones scattered over the valley of desolation till the breath of a new power passed over them, and lo! (I) "the bones came together each one to its joint; (2) the sinews and the flesh came upon them . . . (3) and the skin was stretched out over them . . . and the spirit came into them and they lived." The attorney and the theologian gather the dry bones, but on the preacher and the barrister lie the fourfold task of mortising the joints into each other, binding them with the sinews of argument, clothing them in living beauty and vitalizing the whole structure with the flame of impassioned earnestness. Only when this has been done will they live. So thoroughly distinct are the two offices it rarely happens that a professional theologian becomes an efficient preacher. The concentration and exclusive exercise of one faculty unfits him for a task demanding many. People do not come to church to hear spoken treatises or witness dissecting operations on subtle distinctions. They come to be instructed, pleased and moved.