HERALDS OF GOD
trouble was disclosed; and then you would draw the parallel with that desupernaturalized Christianity so familar to-day, which awaits a fresh baptism of power. Or alternatively, your sermon might set out from the contemporary situation, from the manifest failure of the Christian forces to make their God-intended impact upon this generation, and from the disturbing question haunting so many hearts, "Why has my religion not made a more vital difference to me?" Then you would ask your hearers to observe the Word of God confronting this precise perplexity, diagnosing the trouble with sure insight, and dealing with it decisively. But better than either of these lines of approach to the cardinal truth of the narrative in question would be an introduction which combined them both. Here is how John Hutton does it—note how in three arresting sentences we are taken, not only to the crux of the problem at Ephesus, but to the heart of our own predicament to-day: "Wasn't it too bad of those who taught them the rudiments of the Christian faith—to leave those poor innocents in their little boat with nothing but oars! Not telling them that they might step a mast and let loose a sail, for there was always a favouring breath on the face of those waters! What a fool indeed a man would be who should decide to-day to cross the Atlantic, rowing!"
V
If I have dwelt at some length upon this question of how to begin, it is because it is so essential to gain your
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