Ah, my friends, there is work for you to do and for me to do in order to this grand accomplishment!  Here is my pulpit, and I preach in it.  Your pulpit is the bank.  Your pulpit is the store.  Your pulpit is the editorial chair.  Your pulpit is the anvil.  Your pulpit is the house scaffolding.  Your pulpit is the mechanic’s shop.  I may stand in this place and, through cowardice or through self-seeking, may keep back the word I ought to utter; while you, with sleeve rolled up and brow besweated with toil, may utter the word that will jar the foundations of heaven with the shout of a great victory.  Oh, that this morning this whole audience might feel that the Lord Almighty was putting upon them the hands of ordination.  I tell you, every one, go forth and preach this gospel.  You have as much right to preach as I have, or as any man has.  Only find out the pulpit where God will have you preach, and there preach.

Hedley Vicars was a wicked man in the English army.  The grace of God came to him.  He became an earnest and eminent Christian.  They scoffed at him, and said:  “You are a hypocrite; you are as bad as ever you were.”  Still he kept his faith in Christ, and after awhile, finding that they could not turn him aside by calling him a hypocrite, they said to him:  “Oh, you are nothing but a Methodist.”  That did not disturb him.  He went on performing his Christian duty until he had formed all his troop into a Bible-class, and the whole encampment was shaken with the presence of God.  So Havelock went into the heathen temple in India while the English army was there, and put a candle into the hand of each of the heathen gods that stood around in the heathen temple, and by the light of those candles, held up by the idols, General Havelock preached righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.  And who will say, on earth or in Heaven, that Havelock had not the right to preach?

In the minister’s house where I prepared for college, there was a man who worked, by the name of Peter Croy.  He could neither read nor write, but he was a man of God.  Often theologians would stop in the house—­grave theologians—­and at family prayers Peter Croy would be called upon to lead; and all those wise men sat around, wonder-struck at his religious efficiency.  When he prayed he reached up and seemed to take hold of the very throne of the Almighty, and he talked with God until the very heavens were bowed down into the sitting-room.  Oh, if I were dying I would rather have plain Peter Croy kneel by my bedside and commend my immortal spirit to God than the greatest archbishop, arrayed in costly canonicals.  Go preach this Gospel.  You say you are not licensed.  In the name of the Lord Almighty, this morning, I license you.  Go preach this Gospel—­preach it in the Sabbath-schools, in the prayer-meetings, in the highways, in the hedges.  Woe be unto you if you preach it not.