FIFTY SERMONS BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. CHRIST, starting on staff oficers. There were plenty of NHRIST, starting on the campaign of the world's conquest, was selecting his students with high foreheads, and white hands, and intellectual faces, and refined tastes, in Rome and in Jerusalem. Christ might have called into the apostleship twelve book-worms, or twelve rhetoricians, or twelve artists. Instead, he takes a group of men who had never made a speech, never taken a lesson in belles-lettres,-never been sick enough to make them look delicate -their hands broad, clumsy, and hard knuckled. He chose fishermen, among other reasons, I think, because they were physically hardy. Rowing makes strong arms and stout chests. Much climbing of ratlines makes one's head steady. A Galilee tempest wrestled men into gymnasts. The opening work of the Church was rough work. Christ did not want twelve invalids hanging about him, complaining all the time how badly they felt. He leaves the delicate students at Jerusalem and Rome for their mothers and aunts to take care of, and goes down to the sea-shore, and out of the toughest material makes an apostleship. The ministry need more corporeal vigour than any other class. Fine minds and good intentions are important, but there must be physical force to back them. The intellectual millwheel may be well built and the grist good, but there must be enough blood in the mill-race to turn the one and grind the other. He chose fishermen, also, because they were used to hard knocks. The man who cannot stand assault is not fit for the ministry. It always has been and always will be rough work: and the man who, at every censure or caricature, sits down to |