The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-09

some common ground on which warning factions may work and worship lone army of the living God.
 It calls society to wider and more efficient ministry to need by the method of Jesus, which was the removal of disabilities. enabling men to help them selves, rather than the careless giving of aims.
 It exalts the law of love as the su- preme principle of the universe; de- claring with John, Every one that lov- eth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love-
 It eultivates an intelligent optimism regarding human destiny. While it does not minimize the character and effect of sin, it cherishes a larger hope for the race, and, accepting the glad truth of sonship, it averts its face from that picture of a scenic judgment which was a composite of Mosaic methods and modern legal processes, and trusts all his children to the wise love of the Father who is lover all, and through lall, and in us all"
 These are some of the elements which are determining the character and scope of the modern message. The es- sential thing and we are coming to see it-the essential thing is that man should know God to be a speaking God who has spoken to us in a progressive revelation of Himself and His purposes, that He is still speaking and what He is saying. It is the business of the preacher to listen to the word of the Lord and to mediate the message of re- cancellation.
 Here we all, preachers and laymen alike, enter the holy of holies of our Christian calling. It is not what God said to Moses, or Isaiah, or Paul that we are to proclaim, though that is all vastly important and should be studied and interpreted with reverent gladness, for the deepest needs of men are uni versal and abiding, and the message to one is message for all. But the mes- sage for the time is the message which God is giving to the men of the time. If this is to be the substance of our witnessing we must listen to what God has to say to us. We want word of the Lord spoken in the deep places of consciousness in those hours when the clamor of self is hushed, when outside ivoiees are silenced, and the soul is open to divine influences and with aspiring gaze waits for revelation. To stand lthus among living men and to say Hear the word of the Lord to me-" is to range oneself with the apostles and prophets of all ages, who, with Jesus at their head, have testified to the mighty, regenerating truths which are saving the world.
 Blu tthere is a deeper truth than that. If we are to declare a gospel for need we must first get our own needs sup lplied; we are to find our message in our town experience of the truth There are teachers of theory, and they have en- lriched the worlds literature and in- lcreased mans respect for himself; there Iare other teachers who speak out of their own experience of the truths they declare, and these last are they to lwhom common men listen with eager ness and whose leadership they follow with rejoicing confidence. The world's s Legitimate response to our preachments is, ,You are men of like passions and needs with ourselves; what has this Itruth wrought in your own soul what lis the product of your creed in living lforms?" We must face this question with the ringing T know" of the prim- litive witnesses; we must translate rev Ielation into the terms of motive and lcharacter and transmute 1t into the Ivery nerve and fiber oe daily life.
 The preachers have not lost the mes sage or obscured or distorted it. It was aInever spoken with more simplicity, di- lreetness or authority; it never sprang more clear from the deep wells of per lsonal consciousness or represented more ltruly the living experiences of living linen who have listened to the word of lthe Lord. Without boasting It may be lsaid that this is the extinguishing lmark of the modern message. The day Iof the notebook and the scrap cabinet lis past; the reign of the experimenter with truth is over, and the day of the lman who has fused the truth into living forms in his own soul has clearly ldawned, and that is the simple, mighty, lvital message which is being delivered lto-day.