ductions must be surpassed by those of our riper years; we must never make these our models; they will be best burned, or only preserved to be mourned over because of their superficial character. It were ill, indeed, if we knew no more, after being many years in Christ's school; our progress may be slow, but progress there must be, or there will be cause to suspect that the inner life is lacking or sadly unhealthy. Set it before you as most certain that you have not yet attained, and may grace be given you to press forward towards that which is yet beyond. May you all become able ministers of the New Testament, and not a whit behind the very chief of preachers, though in yourselves you will still be nothing. The word "sermon " is said to signify a thrust, and, therefore, in sermonizing it must be our aim to use the subject in hand with energy and effect, and the subject must be capable of such employment. To choose mere moral themes will be to use a wooden dagger; but the great truths of revelation are as sharp swords. Keep to doctrines which stir the conscience and the heart. Remain unwaveringly the champions of a soulwinning gospel. God's truth is adapted to man, and God's grace adapts man to it. There is a key which, under God, can wind up the musical box of man's nature; get it, and use it daily. Hence I urge you to keep to the old-fashioned gospel, and to that only, for assuredly it is the power of God unto salvation. Of all I would wish to say this is the sum; my brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our one great, all-comprehending theme. The world needs still to be told of its Saviour, and the way to reach Him. Justification by faith should be far more than it is the daily testimony of Protestant pulpits; and if with this master truth there should be more generally associated the other great doctrines of grace, the better for our churches and our age. If with the zeal of Methodists we can preach the doctrine of Puritans a great future is before us. The fire of Wesley, and the fuel of Whitefield, will cause a burning which shall set the forests of error on fire, and warm the very soul of this cold earth. We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel. Man's fall, his need of a new birth, forgiveness through an atonement, and salvation as the result of faith, these are our battle-axe and weapons of war. We have enough to do to learn and teach these great truths, and accursed be that learning which shall divert us from our mission, or that wilful ignorance which shall cripple us in its pursuit. More and more am I jealous lest any views upon prophecy, church government, politics, or even systematic theology, should withdraw one of us from glorying in the cross of Christ. Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy tongue. I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. O that Christ crucified were the universal burden of men of God. Your guess at the number of the beast, your Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Antichrist-forgive me, I count them but mere bones for dogs; while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, and peeping between the folded leaves of destiny to discover the fate of Germany. Blessed are they who read and hear the words of the prophecy of the Revelation, but the like blessing has evidently not fallen on those who pretend to expound it, for generation after generation of them have been proved to be in error by the mere lapse of time, and the present race will follow to the same inglorious sepulchre. I would sooner pluck one single brand from the burning than explain all mysteries. To win a soul from going down into the pit is a more glorious achievement than to be crowned in the arena of theological controversy as Doctor Sufficientissimus; to have faithfully unveiled the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ will be in the final judgment accounted worthier service than to have solved the problems of the religious Sphinx, or to have cut the Gordian knot of apocalyptic difficulty. Blessed is that ministry of which Christ is all. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN Joseph Chamberlain was born in London in July, 1836. He was educated at University College, and in early life became a member of a manufacturing firm in Birmingham which his father had founded in 1854. He retired from this firm early in the seventies with independent means. Mr. Chamberlain had by this time gained a considerable local reputation on account of his radical opinions and a fluency of speech with which he expounded his views in public. In 1868 he had been appointed chairman of the first executive committee of the Education League, and in this capacity he conducted a movement that led to the passing of the Elementary Education Act in 1870. In 1873 he became chairman of the Birmingham school board, to which he had been elected three years before. The transfer to the city authorities of the gas and water works was largely due to his energy. During this time Chamberlain, a liberal in politics, became widely known as an advocate of ultra-radical measures, and gained great popularity with the masses. As the motto for his party he would have: Free church, free land, free schools, and free labor. Elected alderman in 1873, he was three times in succession elected mayor of Birmingham. He was defeated as a candidate for Parliament from Sheffield at the general election in 1874, but was returned unopposed for Birmingham two years later. In 1880, when the Liberals returned to power, Chamberlain was nominated President of the Board of Trade and admitted to a seat in the Cabinet. His influence within and without Parliament had been steadily increasing in the mean time, and he now came to be regarded as the leader of the radical wing of the Liberal party. He became President of the Local Government Board after the election of 1886, but resigned in March of the same year, owing to his strong objection to Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. From this time dates the formation of the Liberal-Unionist party, henceforth closely allied with the Conservatives, of which Chamberlain became the leader in the House of Commons. Chamberlain's hostile attitude to Gladstone, his secession from his old party, and his affiliation with the Conservative interests brought upon him much unfavorable criticism. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1895 Chamberlain took the portfolio of Colonial Secretary. The so-called Ashantee War was an incident of his first year's tenure of that office. He effectually cleared himself before a Parliamentary committee of any implication imputed to him in the Jameson raid in 1896. His management of the Transvaal affair, especially the manner in which he conducted the negotiations that led to the war with the two South African republics, is a matter of contemporaneous history. He was elected lord rector of Glasgow University in 1896. THE FUTURE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE Delivered at a dinner given to celebrate the completion of the Natal Railway, London, November 6, 1895* I THANK you sincerely for the hearty reception you have given to this toast. I appreciate very much the warmth of your welcome, and I see in it confirmation of the evidence which is afforded by the cordial and graceful telegram from the premier of Natal, which has been read by your chairman, and by other public and private communications that I have received, that any man who makes it his first duty, as I did, to draw closer together the different portions of the British Empire will meet with hearty sympathy, encouragement, and support. I thank my old friend and colleague, Sir Charles Tupper, for the kind manner in which he has spoken of me. He has said much, no doubt, that transcends my merits, but that is a circumstance so unusual in the life of a politician that I do not feel it in my heart to complain. I remember that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was certainly one of the most genial Americans who ever visited these shores, said that when he was young he liked his praise in teaspoonfuls, that when he got older he preferred it in tablespoonfuls, and that in advanced years he was content to receive it in ladles. I confess that I am arriving at the period when I sympathize with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Gentlemen, the occasion which has brought us together is an extremely interesting one. We are here to congratulate Natal, its government, and its people, and to congratulate ourselves on the completion of a great work of commercial enterprise and civilization, which one of our colonies, which happens *This dinner was the first public occasion on which Mr. Chamberlain appeared in his official capacity as Secretary of State for the Colonies. His speech is in reply to the toast "The Right Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the |