certainly recognise His voice. This is assumed everywhere in the Scriptures. This is proved in the experience of the ages. How often in the Old Testament do we find the record of such a revelation? Samuel in the Temple, in the darkness and silence of the night, hears with the ears of childhood the word that invites him to his destiny. To Isaiah, "in the year that King Uzziah died," comes in the Holy Place from "a throne high and lifted up" the question, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" and he answers, "Here am I, send me." In the terms of these histories is enshrined the story of the vivid way in which the Almighty revealed His will to the conscience of men of old time. The narratives of the New Testament still further illustrate the manner of the divine compelling. How urgent His call may be, is heard in such a cry as this; "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!" Here was a man to whom preaching was no personal ambition, no mere means of livelihood, who, indeed, "wrought with his own hands that he might not be chargeable to any." To Paul this ministry was a divine compulsion; a duty only to be escaped at the cost of spiritual peace, of the serenity of perfect obedience. In all generations this experience has been repeated. Read the life stories of those who have wrought great works with the hammer of the word, and in every such record you will certainly light upon a page upon which will be told the story of the call that could not be disobeyed. The older biographies of our own preachers abound in accounts of how they were spoken to from on high. In those days there was little earthly advantage to be gained from the work of a Primitive Methodist preacher, itinerant or local. Persecutions were many and the labour was hard—very hard. Often do we read of men struggling to escape from the order which had come unto them, and only yielding at last, because, for love of Him who entreated them, they could do no other. "Sent by my Lord," they cried, "on you I call!"

And this clear word which came to men of old time, which has always come to the man whose work was to lie in the breaking of the bread of life—this clear word must still be regarded as essential to a perfect designation. Of course, there is but one man to whom this supreme indication will be apparent, the man to whom the voice has come; so that with the preacher, himself, lies the final responsibility of his presence in the pulpit—a sent, or unsent, man. Do we say that it is to ask a hard thing to insist that no one shall preach who cannot say confidently that he knows himself to have been moved of God to this place and labour? Hard, perhaps, it may seem, but "strait is the gate and narrow is the way" into this excelling service. There are many hard things in the ordinances of the Kingdom, and, perhaps, it has not been well that we have so often sought to broaden the path, to widen the gate. Possibly there might be fewer preachers if all we have laid down were insisted upon, but there might be more power; there might be more success.

Designation made plain by gifts, graces and an inward sense of Divine election—this then is the first essential in the man. The recollection of this will prevent the office of the preacher from being regarded simply as a profession. When a man enters the ministry "for a living," or because, forsooth, he has social aspirations, he has taken a downward, and not an upward, step. When he comes into the work because all his nature, all his experiences, all the results of religion in his heart and life urge him on, the Lord saying "Go thou and I will be with thee," then glorious is his calling, and glorious will be his record when the day is done!

CHAPTER II.

Things to be Realized.

It is absolutely essential to the successful preaching of the Gospel that the preacher should realise the greatness and dignity of his position; and having once come into this realisation, it is also essential to continuance in well-doing that he abide in it. In himself he may have little in which to glory, but in his calling he has much indeed.

For what is the Christian preacher? He is the very messenger of Jesus Christ to men. He belongs to an order founded and recruited by the Master Himself. First He sent out "the seventy," who probably soon returned; afterwards He sent forth "the twelve," armed with a permanent commission. When, in the ranks of this early band, a vacancy arose through the unfaithfulness of one of its members, He made choice of another. From the opened skies He arrested Saul in his journey to Damascus that he might be a chosen vessel to bear the truth to the Gentiles. From that day to this He has been calling and sending, not less really, a succession of men every one of whom might with Paul have called himself an ambassador of the King of Kings. Of course there were preachers before the apostles and there was preaching before Pentecost. The prophets were preachers, and mighty was their proclamation of the divine message—so mighty that though addressed primarily to their contemporaries it lives and burns to-day. Later, in the period lying between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, there were notable preachers in Israel who kept alive the Messianic hope and sought to "prepare the way of the Lord and make His paths straight." There was preaching in the synagogues in our Lord's own day, and He but observed an established custom when, "entering into the synagogue" at Nazareth, as was His practice "on the Sabbath day," "He stood up for to read," and "there was brought unto Him the book of the Prophet Esaias." He had a text that day, and He preached from it, and, if the end of His discourse was that He was thrust out of the synagogue and was like to have been put to death, it was because of the unwelcomeness of the word He spoke, and not because He had introduced a new order of service into the sanctuary of an intensely conservative people. He preached in the synagogues of Capernaum, too, "and they were astonished at His doctrine, for the word was with power." John the Baptist was a preacher who was more than a prophet, and to his preaching doubtless the Lord Himself listened more than once. "And John began to say unto men everywhere repent." Such seems to have been the burden of his message until that hour when he suddenly found his sweetest music and cried "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Yes, there were preachers before Christ, and long previous to His coming "it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching" to save them that believed. Jesus, however, gave to the order of the preacher a new institution. He put upon the lips of His servants a new message. They were to go, no longer to the children of one favoured nation only, but "out into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." From all classes did He gather the men upon whom He put this glorious burden. Here was a fisherman fresh from his toil upon the deep; here a publican newly come up from the receipt of custom; here a husbandman from distant farm or vineyard, and each was commanded to go "in My name." Each was the representative, the ambassador of the King. Each was promised His help; each the baptism through which memory was to be quickened to recall the words He had spoken—the baptism which was to explain sentences which, at the moment of their utterance, were full of perplexing and affrighting mystery to such as heard. Almost His very last words on earth concerned their mission. Then came Pentecost, the gift of power, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the waiting company in the Upper Room. Signs and wonders filled the hour. The word was with assurance and ran like fire among dry stubble. The multitude was pricked to the heart. Soon followed the Herodian persecution, and the preaching band was scattered abroad. As a result "they went everywhere preaching the word." So the voice of the preacher proclaiming the new faith was heard throughout