reveal the unity beneath the immeasurable complexities and diversities
of the present order." Or as Professor Hocking says: "The prophet must
find in the current of history a unity corresponding to the unity of
the physical universe, or else he must create it. It is this conscious
unification of history that the religious will spontaneously tends to
bring about."[2]

[Footnote 2: _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, p. 518.]

It is then precisely the preacher's task, his peculiar office, to
attempt these vast and perilous summations. What he is set here for
is to bring the immeasurable within the scope of vision. He deals with
the far-flung outposts, no man knows how distant, and the boundless
interspaces of human consciousness; he deals with the beginning, the
middle, the end--the origin, the meaning and the destiny--of human
life. How can anyone give unity to such a prospect? Like any other
artist he gives it the only unity possible, the unity revealed in
his own personality. The theologian should not attempt to evaluate
his age; the preacher may. Because the theologian, like any other
scientist, analyzes and dissects; he breaks up the world. The preacher
in his disciplined imagination, his spiritual intuitiveness,--what we
call the "religious temperament,"--unites it again and makes men see
it whole. This quality of purified and enlightened imagination is of
the very essence of the preacher's power and art. Hence he may attempt
to set forth a just understanding of his generation.

This brings us to the second reason for our topic namely, its
timeliness. All religious values are not at all times equal in
importance. As generations come and go, first one, then another looms
in the foreground. But I sincerely believe that the most fateful