LIFE-PREACHING.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXV, Issue 1309, 23 June 1899, Page 2

LIFE-PREACHING.

By Bey: Theodore, L. Cuyler.

The witty and .jovial- Lord Peterborough after visiting at the house of Fenelon, said to him at parting, " If I stay here much longer I shall become a Christam in spite of myself;" It was riot any exhortation from the good Archbishop's lips that so impressed him as the beauty of a cheerful and consistent life. Godly living is what poor wicked world is dying for want of to-day. Pulpits only give forth their utterances for two or three hours on a single day in the week ; they reach the limited number who come within their range. But Jesus Christ calls every converted soul into a ministry of the daily life, and bids therii preach on seven days of every week. " Let your light shine ;" "As ye go, preach ;" " Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit " — These are among His high commissions to every Christian . Very few people possess the gift of rhetorical eloquence ; but it is within the reach of every earnest follower of Jesus to 1 rise to great eloquence in character and conduct. The best preaching, after all, is the preaching of the daily life. No ecaptic ever attempts to refute that It is self evidencing. Richard Cecil confessed that when he tried in his early life to be a scsptic, his godly mother's life was too much for him. He afterwards added to this that " his first feelings of rej ligion were made stronger by seeing that truly pious people had a genuine happiness that the things of this world could not give." Sometimes the pulpit discourse is not clear to the understanding, nor impressive to the conscience. But the living epistle needs no translation or commentary ; every child can understand it.

I have known a poor sick girl become a ' means of grace ' to a whole family by her quiet patience, her serene trust, and her tranquil joy under severe suffering. Jesus Christ shone out through her lovely character as a night-lamp shines through a transparent porcelain vessel, and fills the appartment with a gentle radience. A fearless Christian clerk of my acquaintance makes himself felt in the same way among his fellow clerks in the store. Without any Pharisaic pretentions or assumptions, he gives them some admirable 'object-teaching' almost every day by his square, manly style of conscientious conduct. John Angell James, the famous Birmingham minister, said in one ef his lectures, ' If I hare a right to consider myself a Christian, if I have attained to any usefulness in the Church of Christ, I owe it in the way of instrumentality to the sight of a companion who slept in the same room with me. He bent his knees every night in prayer, and tho.t roused my slumbering conscience and sent an arrow to my heart. For although I had been religiously educated, I had neglected prayer and cast off the fear of God. My conversion followed, my preparation for the work of the ministry. Nearly half a century has rolled away since then, but that little chamber and that prrying youth are present to my imagination and will never be forgotten even amid the splendours of heaven and through the ages of eternity."

This testimony from the author of the " Anxious Inquirer," and one of the foremost ministers of his day, is most impressive. Observe that it was not what his room-mate said to him but simply what he did, that wrought so potent an influence. It was genuine life-preaching, the unconscious influence of a Christian act. This style of preaching is within the reach of all ages and all conditions of life. Every redeemed man, woman, and child is

called to this ministry. What are a few thousand sermons delivered every sahbath in comparison with the unanswerable eloquence of millions of lives illustrating Christianity from Monday morning to Saturday night all over the land ? And the reason, we fear, why the Sabbath discourses do not make more converts, is that there is such an enormous amount of antiChristian preaching on the part of inconsistent professors.

What can I do for Christ? is a frequent question raised by young converts. The answer is, first of all, live for Him. Your conscientious observance of the Fourth Commandment, is your sermon for the Sabbath ; and your refusal to touch or to offer, the wine-glass, is your temperance lecture ; your strict honesty in the smallest item, is your rebuke of trickery in trade; your open obedience to your Lord and Saviour, is as eloquent in its way as Spurgeon's best discourse is of its kind. Do ypu inquire ' Where is my field ? ? It is all field; wherever, you go. Of course there are, direct Christian activities that may open to you in mission - schools, . prayer - meetings, Young Men's Christian Associations, and elsewhere. But do not compound with your Master for a few hours each week in such special efforts. Preach every- day, everywhere, by letting Christ shine out of everj chink and '

crevice of your character ; so shall your life be full of light. The sermons in shoes are the sermons to convert an ungodly world.