PREACHING BY CANVASSING
Our preaching must be dynamic. The initiative, under God, must rest with us as preachers, and anything which savours of letting-be must be examined very critically. While we know that there are merchantmen, seeking goodly pearls, who see the name " Christadelphian " on a notice-board, or wall-poster or in a newspaper, and penetrating through that disguise come to know and buy the Truth's priceless jewel, merchantmen of that calibre are few, and there are brighter (though cheaper) goods to distract them. And though there may be men who, wandering careless through the field, stub their toes upon the evidence of the hid treasure and think it worth the buying, it rests very much with us whether the evidence is there to be struck.

The warning has already been sounded against the easy, " They have the Bible; let them seek for themselves," but as we come now to widen the scope of preaching far beyond our formal lecturing, we need to sound it again. " The lectures are held every week for them to come to if they will. We have done our duty, and can do no more. This is an age of indifference, and we are taught to expect that men will not hearken." That is a very common specimen of special pleading, and it must be overthrown. If we have done our duty we can certainly do no more, but that sentence needs inverting: until we can do no more, we have not done our duty.

And we can do more. We give assent to this when we organize " special" efforts, which show that we are for the time devoting more to the task than we generally do. We are obliged to agree without reserve when we come to see the bare minimum with which so many of us can be satisfied. If our attendance is exemplary it is well; and our contribution to the expenses of the work generous according to our means, that is well also. But we can stop there with a good reputation if we will, leaving the remainder of the work to the Recording Brother and president and lecturer, and the discharge of its arrangements to the bill-posting company, the advertising staff of the newspaper, and the Post Office. Even the " special " efforts of such of us fall into the same picture when, as is usually the case, the contributions for them have been taken up throughout the year.

Of course, there are others who do more: they diligently advance their faith to those they meet, and give them invitations to come to such lectures, attending then to their needs and seeking to further their interest, and there is nothing but commendation for such activities, which some of us would confess to finding difficult. Many a public speaker would confess that he found it much easier to proclaim the Truth from a platform, than to name the Name to his colleagues, | and some might even suggest apparently good reasons why the latter should be omitted. But such reasons need to be I carefully overhauled. There are brethren (and specially sisters) too, who silently and painstakingly seek to carry the Truth into the hearts of children of Christadelphian and other rents, in Sunday Schools, and cheerfully accept the responsibility of maintaining steady instruction, while the speaking brother can speak and depart. There are other tasks, too, in our diversity of ministrations1, and in the counsel to a particular kind of work which follows, it will be understood that no disparagement is meant of these others.

The brethren among us who speak need a special word. They could rightly urge that public preaching does not consist even mainly of the few minutes on each occasion in which they are seen of men, but that their work involves long hours of preparation, which leaves them little time for other methods of private witness. This is not disputed, but it is not sufficient. There are those who suggest unkindly that the public preacher likes to appear in public for his own sake, and there are preachers who know that it may not for them be altogether false, and it is good that the charge shall be both met and disproved. Those who appear in the sight of audiences set an example in a way, which less public servants of the Word do not; the lecturer is also an exhorter, and he must also be a pastor. His peculiar cross is not only to commend courses of action to his brethren and sisters, but to show by his own practice of them that he believes in them.

Many brethren whose time is largely occupied with the labours of public speaking, will do well to turn aside, when opportunity offers to engage in canvassing. Even though they believe their qualifications for this work to be meagre, it is a discipline not to be neglected, and an approach to the stranger, which in its field is unsurpassed. Moreover, brethren and sisters will be encouraged to engage in canvassing when they find that those who exhort them set the example. Our public servants must, however great the burden, know whereof they speak by what they do, so that here also they may say, " Be ye followers of me."2

There are few of us who find the work easy, who have a natural bent for the work, the easy resource for saying that right thing at the right time, and a way of saying it pleasantly. For the rest of us it is uphill and difficult work. It is hard for the reasons which have of late made our public lectures so unproductive, that most people are indifferent to God, and loth to lend an ear to the good Word of the Gospel. Our discouragements do not lie -mainly in hostility or the strength of men's opposing views-many of us would be delighted if they did-so much as in this blank lack of interest. We do well to bear in mind this position at the outset, and treat it, not as a reason for leaving off the work, but one for preparing the more thoroughly, and seeking with greater intensity the strength to endure.

Two familiar sayings point the way to effectiveness: " Experience teaches," and " Practice makes perfect." The way to become useful in canvassing is to do plenty of it. There are occasions when canvassing has become an established practice-particularly " campaigns "-but there is no need to wait for a campaign, or even for a course of special lectures. There are the meetings of the nearest local ecclesia, and there is always, and greatest, the Bible itself.

How do we begin? At first we nearly always do better to go about in twos (it was not for nothing that Jesus sent his disciples out two and two, 3) each giving the other support. As soon as both partners are prepared to adventure their message alone, is the time to divide forces, but it may help for a while if the two continue together, each in turn making the introduction, with a clear understanding that the other shall be expected to step in and help when need arises. Even after we are sufficiently confident to continue alone, it is often a good thing to join up again from time to time with another canvasser, to refresh a method of approach which may have grown stale from continued use, and gain from the other's criticism.

When it is left to our choice, we should consider carefully what is the best hour at which to canvass. In our ordinary working weeks we shall have little choice, but the evening time is one of the best in any case, when the ordinary household duties of the women have slackened, and the men also are at home. Indeed, the evening is almost the only time when we can hope to meet the latter. We are likely to provoke only irritation if we attempt to talk to busy housewives when they are struggling with the midday meal.