In an exceedingly good essay on "The Love of the Truth," Archbishop Whately said: "He who does not begin by preaching what he thoroughly believes, will speedily end by believing what he preaches." That is not an imaginary danger. How many men have hypnotized themselves into a state of pseudo-sincerity only judgment day will reveal. And this is true--when a man begins to preach, preaches the representative view of his brotherhood rather than what he himself has gathered and satisfied himself about in God's work, he is entering the penumbra of his soul's eclipse. When thereupon he gains reputation and approval among his brethren, the danger increases. If by chance he must defend those views in a debate or two, he is about done for. He will probably act a part all the rest of his life, unconscious of the fact. He is not himself, he is not real. Perhaps some terrible experience that would shake his life from center to circumference might send him, bereft of all he thought he had, back to God and to God's word, empty-handed, receptive, childlike of heart, to deal with God at first-hand and sincerely. And in that case it might also happen that he would not be counted a "big preacher" any longer, for the praise of such men is not of man, but of God; but he would at any rate have power and a constant sense of God's approval. But "the heart is deceitful above all [181] things: . . . who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9.) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Ps. 139:23, 24.)

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