“To make the world Christian the modern preacher must understand that Christ’s gospel is to be preached not alone to Presbyterians but to ‘all the world’ and that not he but God brings about the transformation and conversion. That it is not his province to defend the faith, which needs not defense, but to preach it. He must stick to his last with the same zealousness and persistency as is required in other lines of endeavor, or his message is soon delivered. A preacher who shirks his work, remouthing to a weary congregation his old sermons, must not complain if men do not listen. He must work in the vineyard; men do not go to a theatre to hear a sermon or to a church to see vaudeville. He is not to give his time to platitudes and polemics and phylacteries and lectures and dissertations on doctrinal divergences. He must be free and must speak from his heart as the ambassador of Christ, preaching Christ; and preaching is the giving of the message of Jesus to a needing soul. “The church must be more universal, laying aside doctrinal jealousies and divergences; turn its energies to the harvest; self-sacrifice and co-operation must reign; love must seek her own and think no evil—then when all ask, expecting to obey, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?’—the Mussulman will turn Christian and the wolf and the lamb lie down together. “The easy field of labor is not with the so-called Christian people. Canton may be converted before Boston and Timbuktu before Louisville. The most sterile earth is that overgrown with the tares of false doctrine and the most infertile seed is that mouldy with the supercilious consciousness of no sin, or which having once sprouted has dried out from inanition. God, tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, has given to the heathen a mind to receive his truths as a little child. Life, two hundred fathoms deep in the sea, knows nothing of the storms that rile the surface, nor of the brightness and warmth of the sun, yet life and light are there. The deep sea fishes are of vivid colors, many have an individual lighting system, the waters are phosphorescent, the plant growth, as near mineral as vegetable, spreads about tendrils and filaments tipped by lamps, which transform that underworld into a gorgeously illuminated garden. “Those who hearken to the final commission, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’ are armed with the promise that ‘in my name shall ye cast out devils,’ speak with new tongues and travel about unharmed. They have Christ for a companion and are builders of God’s tabernacle, in which when completed, he shall dwell with men and wipe all tears from their eyes.” ———— John was very fond of his cousin, David Clark, and was worried by his continued absence. Now, as always when he came to Danville, he stopped with David’s parents and of course inquired if they had received any word from him.