To be true to God, the preacher must be true to his time, as the
Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles were to theirs. The pulpit dies of
its dignity, when it creeps into the exhausted receiver of foregone
conclusions, and has nothing to say but of Adam and Pharaoh, Jew
and Gentile, Palestine and Tyre so far away. Its decorum of being
inoffensive to others is suicidal for itself. It is the sleep of
death for all. As the inductive philosopher took all knowledge for
his province, it must take all life. We have, indeed, a glorious and
venerable charter of inestimable worth in our map of the religious
history of mankind through centuries that are gone. We must study
the true meaning of the Bible, _the book_ and chief collection of
the records of faith, precious above all for the immortal image and
photograph, in so many a shifting light and various expression, of
the transcendent form of divinity through manhood in Him to be ever
reverently and lovingly named, Jesus Christ. But there is a spirit in
man. "The word of God," says an Apostle, "is not bound"; nor can it
be wholly bound up. The Holy Spirit of God that first descended never
died, and never ceased to act on the human soul.
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