The Theological Method. 273 



not seen the doctrine ; they have seen a good man suffering 

 for humanity, a good man laying down his life for his 

 friends, and that has touched their hearts to finer issues. 



But with all the theological preaching, all the preaching 

 of total depravity and eternal hell and the atonement and 

 the trinity and election and predestination, and so on, there 

 has been a great deal of moral and religious preaching. 

 Some of the most theological preachers have been sternly 

 ethical. Calvin, for instance, did in no wise waste himself 

 entirely in theological speoiilations. He attempted to regu- 

 late the social life of Geneva down to the last particular. 

 People should even go home and go to bed at such a time. 

 A great many preachers have been social reformers. Theo- 

 dore Parker preached a sermon on the dvities of milkmen, 

 and Archbishop Tillotson preached one on the duty of 

 mothers to suckle their own children. All the ages down, 

 there has been a great deal of ethical preaching with the 

 theological. The theological has made the more noise. It 

 has oftener got into books. But it has not done anything 

 like so much good as the other. That has often fallen into 

 good ground and sprung up and borne fruit thirty, sixty and 

 a hundred fold. 



The idea of conversion has been very prominent in the 

 Christian world. Without a conscious conversion many 

 have insisted that no one can have any hope of everlasting 

 happiness or be a Christian here. Now, that preaching has 

 effected a great many very real conversions I am not in the 

 least inclined to doubt. It has converted the drtuikard and 

 the licentious from their evil ways. It has persuaded those 

 Avho have stolen to steal no more. It has sent men and 

 women home to be better husbands and wives ; more kind, 

 more tender, more thoughtful, more forgiving. But I do 

 not believe that the best effect of preaching has been by its 

 conversions sharp turnings-round of men from bad ways 

 to good. I believe that its best effect has been to bathe 

 men in an atmosphere of holiness, to induce in them a habit 

 of noble expectation with themselves, to keep them in the 

 constant presence of beautiful and exigent ideals, and most 

 of all in the presence of that ideal of tenderness and com- 

 passion and sincerity which was embodied in the life of 

 Jesus of jSTazaretli, the carpenter's son. 



The Keligious method of social reform, as I prefer to call 

 it, is tlie method of personal character. The i)reaching of 

 the Christian church has been one aspect of tliis method. 

 It has had many great allies, the theatre; the novel; the 



