What is Vital in Christianity Author:Josiah Royce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FROUDE; OR THE HISTORIAN AS PREACHER PAUL REVERE FROTHINGHAM Boston, Mass. We have had abundant evidence of late, if evidence were needed in the matter, t... more »hat preaching is not of necessity confined to pulpits, nor a matter solely of the churches of the world. There are sermons which come from men of letters, as well as ministers, and from politicians who are genuine prophets. Whatever may be thought about the character of the sermons he delivers, and the nature of the texts from which he draws his inspiration, there can be no question of the fact that Theodore Roosevelt is essentially a preacher. His messages to Congress, which came with more than ministerial regularity and frequency, were essentially homi- letical in form as well as hortatory in purpose, and his public addresses might well be collected under the Newmanesque title of Political and Plain Sermons. In all of this there is nothing remarkable, unless it be in the fact that the individual chances to be a statesman and politician, instead of a poet, or a man of letters pure and simple. Most of us remember the question that Coleridge once put to his friend Charles Lamb, and the witty answer which he instantly received; but perhaps the repetition of it may be pardoned for the sake of those who have forgotten. " Charles," said the poet to his friend, referring to the days when he had been the minister of a Unitarian congregation,—"Charles, did you ever hear me preach?" "I never heard you do anything else," was the ready although stuttering reply. The same might equally well be said of many another person who has either changed his profession or chosen from the first a wholly different calling. The man of letters, for example, is frequently a preacher. Carlyle was, who thundered and sent forth vivid lightnings again...« less