like weather-vanes, veering with the wind, but like mountains, which turn the course of the wind. Nothing so affects one's manner as clearly defined and well-settled spiritual principles in the inner life. The whole external man is modified by their influence. They give inflection to the voice. It is incisive or pathetic, persuasive or admonitory, as they are sharp or tender, earnest or conclusive. The range of its gamut is the sweep of his convictions. The preacher must know the truth to possess it. He must search for it to obtain it. He cannot search well unless he be trained to find the way, and to detect it when he sees it. An opaque mind can never transmit the white light of truth. A disorderly brain can never present an orderly arrangement of the truth. It is as true of ideas as it is of men, that a few well-organized and directed convictions will disperse a mob of fancies. There never has been a time when men were more anxious to hear opinions about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, sin, salvation, death, immortality, heaven, hell, and the judgment day. But what the world needs now and always are verities concerning these profound subjects. In this world, where the withering grass and the fading flower are the symbols of so much of human experience, human souls are in an agony to find something that is permanent. The preacher who believes his message, with no reservations, will preach it with a full breath, and the mark of his message will be traced on all the being of those who hear him. And, moreover, men will hear him. Effectiveness will be in proportion to faith.

IV. The preacher must apprehend the full significance of man. He must discern what he is and what he ought to be, the nature and complexity of his organization, what his needs are, and what his responsibility is. Next to the study of the book must be the study of man and men. They cannot all be approached from the same angle or impressed by the same methods. But he must reach them. If he does not his ministry fails of its purpose. There are no miraculous endowments which enable him to dispense with study. He must know man to control him. He must feel his necessities to deal with him and help him. He must feel that the welfare of man here and hereafter is poised on man's own self-determining will. The realization of what man is, what he should be, and what he may be will move the soul of the preacher until every drop

of blood in him will quiver with concern.

Out of this sense

of the value of man sprang that amazing and sublime mediation of Moses on Sinai, when by expostulation he averted the wrath of God from the camp of Israel, "If thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, ont of thy book which thou hast written." It was this perception of the human and eternal issues at stake that extorted from Paul that wail of agony, "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." The effect of this conception of man and his future destiny will be a powerful incentive to the enunciation of the truth. When Sir Isaac Newton was completing his demonstration of the law of gravitation he was so agitated at the grandeur of his discovery that he was compelled to employ an amanuensis to complete the record of it. So the recognition of all that is involved for the human race in the acceptance or rejection of God's overture of mercy to men must inevitably quicken every latent power of the preacher and give it its strongest expression.

One experiment of Mr. Tyndall, in his lecture on light, was always very forcible. He took a piece of alum and, intercepting a beam of light with it, projected an image of the ray of light upon the screen. It was a brilliant but cold spectrum. It was light without heat. The lump of alum held back the ray of heat. But light and heat are twins. God made them so. And light without heat would only serve very soon to display a bleak and cheerless world. It is a great propulsive force. The old Scotch woman's quaint demand of the new pastor was a simple woman's perception of the power of the pulpit, "Give me the word," she said, "hot off the bakestone." The pulpit must furnish light; but it will accomplish but little for men or with them unless that light is accompanied with divine heat and with the sympathy and passion of an anxious, consecrated soul, yearning for the salvation of man and bending every power to

realize it.

H. Swindells

ART. VIII.—THE REMOVAL OF THE TIME LIMIT.

THIS question will without doubt be again brought before the next session of the General Conference; and, although it will hardly be possible to present any new arguments on either side of the subject, the polemical warfare must necessarily continue until one side or the other is victorious.

The Committee on Itinerancy at the last General Conference somewhat startled the assembly by presenting, on the twelfth day of the session, a report recommending the entire removal of the time limit. The vote in the committee had stood forty-nine in favor of this report to nineteen against, or more than two and a half to one-an astonishing majority obtained in one of the most important committees organized by the General Conference. A minority report, signed by sixteen members of the committee, was presented two days afterward, to the effect that "the present time limit of five years should be allowed to stand until the Church has had time to give it a fair and reasonable trial." On the nineteenth day of the session, after a protracted debate, the minority report was substituted for the majority report by a vote of 298 to 162 and was adopted. The question naturally arises why this large majority was cast against the removal of the time limit when the vote of the Committee on Itinerancy was so overwhelmingly in favor of the removal of all legal restrictions. On this point opinions will differ; but it was believed by many in the General Conference that, if the debate on the question could have continued without the interruptions caused by the General Conference elections, the majority report would have been adopted. In all probability it was only defeated through the plea presented in the minority report that the present five-year limit had not been sufficiently tested. It seemed only just that those in favor of the removal of the limitation should be willing to give the five-year rule a reasonable trial. The question was therefore not decided, but postponed, the postponement being secured by the delay of five days before taking the final vote, which delay may be considered providential, inasmuch as great changes should progress slowly and reforms that are sure to come can afford to wait.

The Church tested the two-year limitation for sixty years,

and the three-year rule for twenty-four years, or a little more than one third of the sixty years; therefore will not one third of the twenty-four years be sufficient for the trial of the fiveyear limit? The General Conference of 1896 will answer this question and, we trust, will give to the millions of Methodism an untrammeled itinerancy for the work of the twentieth century. During the debate at the last General Conference nine spoke in favor of, and five against, the removal of the limitation. The opposition did not argue the question so much as they pleaded for longer trial of the five-year rule. Among the statements made were the following: "If this action is taken you will ruin the itinerancy in twenty-five years;" "The Church will fall into Congregationalism;" "The bishops will be unable to make the appointments;" "Methodism has done grandly under the time limit;" "An itinerancy without a time limit is a thing of which dreams are made;" "The Church is not ready for the change;" "Do not strike down a piece of mechanism so well constructed by the fathers." Danger signals like the above may have frightened the Conference of 1892, but we predict that the arguments of those who favor the removal of all restriction must be met and answered if the question is to be decided again in the negative.

It may not be inopportune to present some of the reasons why the pastoral limitation should be entirely removed:

I. We affirm that previous extensions of the time limit have been beneficial to Methodism. Who will charge that the advance of the limit to three years, and then to five years, has worked hardship to the country charges? Why then array the city against the country and cry "class legislation?" If the country charges do not feel the need of a more extended pastorate how can they be injured by granting such an extension to the cities, which do realize such a need? We claim that the country pastorates have been lengthened by the extension of the time limit from two to five years. The record of five hundred and forty ministers in the Northern New York Conference and the Black River Conference, since 1836, has been traced with instructive results. Previous to 1864, under the two-year limit, the average pastorate was one year, three months, and eighteen days. Under the three-year limit the average pastoral term was two years and twenty-six days, and

in all probability the average has now reached nearly three years; therefore the country pastorate must have been lengthened as well as that of the city, and the city is not arrayed against the country, as has been claimed. Even though the country pastorates might be shortened because of the extension, this is no reason why all charges and pastors should not stand on their merits. Were the cities mistaken in their desire for an extension of the time limit? Were there any memorials from cities asking the last General Conference to return to the three-year limit? On the contrary, did they not present many memorials praying for the removal of all restriction?

II. The limitation is contrary to sound common sense and business principles. What would the commercial world think of removing clerks as soon as they became thoroughly familiar with their trade and customers; or of compelling doctors, lawyers, or judges each five years to begin anew the work of life in untried fields; or of a government that denied congressmen and senators the privilege of reelection? Such limitations would call forth the derision of all thinking minds. The college president and professor are often retained during life, because their value increases with each year; but there would be more reason in limiting the period of service among college presidents than among pastors, for students only remain at college till their studies are completed, while the larger portion of our membership remain in the same church until death. What if it had been the law that the generals in the late war should have been removed at the end of three years, according to the limitation of Methodism at that time? If the cabinet had said to General Grant just before the battle of the Wilderness, "Your time is up, and no matter what the exigencies are, you must go," the government would have been the laughing stock of the civilized world. Why, then, should Methodism, in the midst of revivals, church building, and other enterprises, take the position that the man who has his hand on the helm must go at the end of five years? How can we foretell, five years in advance, the condition of things on a certain charge? There should be no law forbidding the cabinet to use their wise judg ment and follow sound business principles, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, in the appointment of ministers the fifth year as for the other four years, and so on to the end of their