speaker, may we not here find the fundamental elements of success for those who would speak with truth and effectiveness upon other occasions?

Two essential elements in successful preaching are truth and personality. By truth here is meant God's revelation. The truth of the preacher is the Bible truth. Not exclusively, for the Bible will conduct him beyond the Bible, to the heart, to history, and to the book of nature, but the ultimate authority for him is the Bible as the revealed truth of God. Three things are involved in this matter of truth-receiving, adapting, and giving. The preacher will first find and appropriate the truth to himself. He will adapt it in such a way as to make it available for his practical work as a teacher. He will adopt the best means in his power of giving that truth to others.

No one thing will add so much to a man's power in speaking as the conscious possession of truth. As Cardinal Newman says, "What is so powerful an incentive to preaching as the sure belief that it is the preaching of the truth?" The speaker knows he stands upon a solid rock, and this assurance produces the highest type of self-confidence.

It is the work of the preacher to interpret the truth, not to create it. That he may search out the right kind of truth he should have a clear and definite purpose ever before him. Phillips Brooks says, in speaking of the minister: "He must receive the truth as one who is to teach it. He can not, he must not study as if the truth he sought were purely for his own culture or enrichment. This will bring, first, a deeper and more solemn sense of responsibility in the search for truth; second, a desire to find the human side of every truth, the point at which every speculation touches humanity; and, third, a breadth which

comes from the constant presence in the mind of the fact that truth has various aspects and presents itself in many ways to different people, according to their needs and characters.

It will be seen, then, that no two men will convey their message exactly alike. They will speak out of the fulness of their own hearts and experiences. Each man has a grasp of partial truth, but no man has the whole truth. As Professor James says, the truth is too great for any one actual mind. Each man will give what he has to give.

The importance of truth is nowhere emphasized more than in the Bible. "The truth of the Lord endureth forever.”—Psalm cxvii., 2. "Thy law is the truth."—Psalm cxix., 142. “All thy commandments are truth."—Psalm exix., 151. "He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart."— Psalm xv., 2. "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." --Psalm xxv., 10. "His truth shall be thy shield and buckler."-Psalm xci., 4. "The lip of truth shall be established forever."-Proverbs xii., 19. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."John viii., 32. "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."-John xiv., 6. "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."—John xvii., 17. "For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."-John xviii., 37. "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ."Ephesians iv., 15. "For the fruit of the Spirit is in all 'Phillips Brooks, Yale Lectures on Preaching.

goodness and righteousness and truth."—Ephesians v., 9. "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness."-Ephesians vi., 14. "And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth."-I John, v., 6.

The knowledge and consciousness of this truth will do much toward making a man eloquent in speech. "There is a calm and earnest trust in God's ordinance," says Austin Phelps, "that truth shall do its work in the salvation of men, which every preacher needs to make him what the world calls a natural orator. Possest of such a trust, all preachers may be natural orators. That trust creates a spirit of repose in the use of God's instrument. It makes a preacher feel that he can afford to preach the truth naturally. He need not exaggerate it; he need not distort it; he need not deck it with meretricious ornament; he need not mince it, nor inflate it, nor paint it. He has only to speak it in a spirit of reverence and love, and let it do its work. It will do its work. He may safely repose in it. In the very heat and turmoil of the world's hostility to his message, he may wrap himself in the spirit of a child's faith. That shall be to him and to his life's work like the mantle of a prophet. He may know in his inmost soul that his words are the wisdom of God and the power of God.”

But truth alone is not sufficient, else we might leave the sermon to the printed page. What is needed is the message and the man, or truth conveyed through personality. The qualities of a truly great personality are many. Among them are faith, personal piety, unselfishness, magnetism, sociability, culture of mind and heart, and devotion to humanity. Paul's personality speaks even from the printed page because of his unquenchable love for men.

The

personal side of the preacher is strikingly emphasized by Beecher in his Yale Lectures: "Make religion attractive by the goodness that men see in you; be so sweet, so sparkling, so buoyant, so cheerful, hopeful, courageous, conscientious and yet not stubborn, so perfectly benevolent and yet not mawkish or sentimental; blossoming in everything that is good, a rebuke to everything that is mean or little-make such men of yourselves that everybody who looks upon you may say, "That is a royal good fellow; he has the spirit that I should like to lean upon in time of trouble, or to be a companion with at all times.' Build up such a manhood that it shall be winning to men.'

One great object of preaching, like other forms of public speaking, is persuasion. The final test is whether men act. They are convinced of the truth through the intellect; they are persuaded to act upon the truth through the heart. How this can best be done is one of the problems of successful preaching.

In his lecture on The Secrets of Effective Preaching1 the Rev. J. H. Jowett says: "Months ago I determined that there should be more of the tender lover in my pulpit speech, more of the wooing note of the Apostle Paul, more of the gentleness and tender constraint of my Lord." He advocates less scolding and more pleading, less driving and more wooing in pulpit delivery. It is this tenderness of speech, the truth spoken in love, that wins men. Doctor Jowett further suggests that the preacher should question himself thus: "Do I feel sin to be loathsome? Am I possest of a tender sensitiveness, that can discern even the faintest movings in the hearts of my people, and which will reveal

1 The Secrets of Effective Preaching, delivered before the Free Church Congress, Cardiff, March, 1901. Hodder & Stoughton.

to me their inclinations long before they receive any outward expression? And, Lord Jesus, have I been a wooer, a lover, and are any in Thy kingdom because they were just enticed into it by the tender persuasiveness of my life and speech? And have I linked the proclamation of duties to the love of Calvary? And has my teaching had New Testament perspective and proportion, and have I evinced delight in my own message?"

The affectionate spirit in preaching is what is most needed. This will impart beauty and feeling to the spoken word. It will give zeal and sincerity to the message. Thus will the whole man speak when possest of the truth and a genuine love for men. Schleiermacher possest this "persuasive, penetrating, kindling effusion of feeling" in his preaching, and little do we wonder when we read these fervent words he wrote to his father: "From my heart I do wish that God's blessing may be upon my sermons, so that they may be sources of true edification and speak to the heart, as, I trust, they will ever come from the heart. To you I need not say how deeply I am moved at the thought of being numbered among those to whom so important an office is entrusted, nor need I assure you that I do not now, and never shall, look upon it merely as a means of livelihood."

It is said of Cardinal Newman that the tones of his voice seemed as if they were something more than his own. His musical voice had such a rare charm for his hearers that they did not miss the entire absence of gesture. His body and soul glowed with supprest emotion as he entered more deeply into his subject. He is vividly described by Principal Shairp as having this peculiarity in delivery: "Each sentence was spoken rapidly, but with great clear