HERALDS OF GOD
acceptance you are pleading. They focus the issue, and so help towards obtaining a verdict. They may stick in the memory when all the rest has been forgotten. Some texts indeed supply their own divisions. Thus, if you are to preach on "The Church at Worship," from the words "They continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers"; or on "The Fight of Faith," from the apostolic injunction "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong"; or on "The Four Dimensions of Redeeming Love," from the prayer of intercession "That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height"—it will hardly be necessary to search far for your divisions, for in each case they are shouting at you from the text itself. With other texts, again, appropriate heads reveal themselves on due consideration and reflection. You are going to preach, let us say, on the words "Looking unto Jesus." What does a steady Christward look involve? It means looking outward, and not inward; upward, and not downward; forward, and not backward. There, then, are your divisions: and you proceed to show that the characteristic trend and direction of our life as Christians must be outward to the objective facts of revealed religion (though of course you will express this differently), not inward to our subjective moods and processes; upward to our divine destiny, "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," not downward to any earthy origins; forward to the
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