Across all our thoughts how to secure attractiveness, as a co-ordinate line which fixes attention to the true point, runs the word "Faithfulness." The preacher is to be attractive while faithful, faithful while attractive. And he is to be attractive not for the sake of so being, but in order that he may win an entrance for the words of faithfulness, to his Master's praise.

WE ARE MESSENGERS.

Yes, this is what we are to be as preachers. We are to seek "mercy of the Lord to be faithful." [1 Cor. vii. 25.] We are not popular leaders, looking for a cry, or passing one on. We are not speculative thinkers, feeling out a philosophy, communicating our guesses at truth to a company of friends who happen to be interested in the investigation. We are "messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord." We are in commissioned charge of a divine, authentic, and unalterable message. We are the expounders of a "Word which liveth and abideth for ever," [1 Pet. i. 23.] a Word which man is always trying to judge and to disparage, but which will judge man at the last day [Joh. xii. 48.]. We are the bondservants of an absolute Master, who is at once our Sender and our Message, and who overhears our every word in its delivery.

It is a grave mistake, as we saw in our last chapter, to think that faithfulness means a repellent utterance of "the faithful Word." [Tit. i. 9.] But it is at least an equal mistake to think that attractiveness means a modification of that Word, which to the end of our world's day will still be a "folly" and a "stumbling-block," [1 Cor. i. 23.] in some respects, to the unconverted soul, and will always have its searching point and edge for the converted soul also.

But this consideration here is only by the way. I return from it to the matter of a right and faithful attractiveness and some of its higher conditions.

SECRETS FOR TRUE ATTRACTIVENESS.

"Preach the Gospel—earnestly, interestingly, fully." Such, I believe, is the prescription given, by the great preacher whom I cited in the last chapter, to the Pastor who would fill his church, and keep it full. In the first instance, no doubt, Mr Spurgeon gives it as a prescription to the Nonconformist Pastor; but it is quite as much to the purpose for the Conformist, so far as he is a Minister of the Word.[33] What I have to say in these present pages shall run on the lines of that sentence of good counsel.

[33] And let it never be forgotten that this is his primary function in the mind of the Church of England. See the Priest's Ordination, particularly its Exhortations, its Commission, and its final Collect.

"PREACH THE GOSPEL."

i. "Preach the Gospel," that is to say Jesus Christ, in His Person, His Work, His Offices, His Teaching, all applied to the souls and lives of men. Would you truly and permanently attract, with an attraction which God will bless? Let that be your first condition. I do not dilate upon it here, but with all the earnestness possible I lay it upon my younger Brother's heart as we pass on. Preach the Gospel, that is to say the Lord, in all He is for man as man is a sinner, a mortal, a mourner, a worker. Do not let Christ be one subject among others. As little can the sun be one among the planets. He is the Subject; all others get their reality and importance for us preachers by their relation to Him. In particular I venture to say, do not let occasional, temporal, local topics, even very important ones, dislodge Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ of the whole Bible, from His royal place in your preaching; and do not forget continually (though not monotonously) to keep to the front the fact that He is the sinner's Saviour. More will be said later about that point of view, but I state it at once. Speak indeed of Christ as Exemplar, Ideal, Friend, Man of Men; but do not let your brethren forget that, "first of all, Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures," [1 Cor. xv. 3.] and that His primary practical relation to us is always that of Saviour to sinner. That truth is not altogether in fashion now. But it is eternal; it is deep as the human soul, and as the Law of God, and as such it is a mighty condition to attractiveness, wisely and truly handled. It corresponds to the inmost facts of the hearers' being, whether they are aware of it yet or not; and is there not here the most powerful of magnets, at least in posse?