your minds that the work of the pulpit is paramount to everything else. At the present day, more than at any previous period, a Christian minister stands or falls by the manner in which he performs his pulpit duties.

Now the work of the pulpit is vitally connected with and dependent on the work of the study. If you would be efficient in the one, you must be laborious in the other. Sermons do not come now-a-days by inspiration. The preachers to whom Christ said, "Take no thought what ye shall say," lived under a miraculous dispensation, and could reckon on miraculous aids. But the age of miracles is past. Timothy lived much nearer to that age than we do, and yet he was required to study to show himself approved unto God, a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Divine help, or if you will have it, Divine inspiration, is still afforded to the Christian minister; but it comes as the result, the fruit, the reward of diligent study. And while you avoid the presumption of trusting to the miraculous aids of the Spirit of God, avoid the still greater folly of trusting to your own genius to supply the lack of study. A young minister, or an old minister, who shirks the toil of study from the persuasion that he may trust to his genius for supplying his pulpit requirements, shows by this very proceeding that he has precious little genius to trust to. The distinguishing characteristic of genius is, concentrated enthusiasm of laborious application. There is much in original faculty, no doubt, but there is more, a great deal more in the use made of original faculty. Great geniuses have ever been great workers, and that supernal light which we call the light of genius is generated by the eager, the passionate, the persistent friction of the soul upon the objects of thought. Settle it, therefore, in your minds, that for your sermons to be worth hearing, you will have to labour for them.

Sermons may be grouped under three main divisions-the textual, the topical, the expository. The first, or textual, is the most popular form of sermon; the second, or topical, is the most philosophical; the third, or expository, is the most natural and instructive. Were I required to say which of the three I prefer and commend, I would say the expository; and I regard it as a promising augur that this mode of sermonizing is becoming more common among us. At the same time let me add, all the three modes are legitimate, each having its own peculiar advantages; hence, instead of singling out one of the three as the only proper mode of fashioning sermons, I would rather say, follow in this matter the bent of your own mind; be true to the laws, the proclivities, the aptitudes of your own intellectual being; be true to yourselves, and you will inevitably cast your sermons in the right mould. Some of you by structure and bent of intellect will adopt

the textual mode of sermonising-others the topical-others, again, the expository; and probably you will all be inclined at different times and under different circumstances to adopt all the three modes. But as age advances and your minds mature, you will, 1 think, feel an increasing preference for the expository mode.

In the selection of subjects, be guided in the first place by the spiritual condition of the people to whom you minister. There are indeed a large number of subjects never out of place or out of time, and it is desirable to have a good assortment of sermons of this class. In our migratory life we are often obliged to minister to people of whose spiritual requirements we are necessarily ignorant. Among them we "draw the bow at a venture;" 'tis well if we have the assurance that the arrow we discharge is from the Lord's own quiver, and that wherever it falls it must pierce. But where circumstances admit of it, be ruled by the question of adaptation. Feel the pulse and observe the symptoms of the patient, before determining the treatment he is to receive. In the selection of subjects you will also be guided in great measure by the interest they create in your own hearts. Generally speaking, if you feel little or no interest in a subject, if it fail to kindle and quicken your own soul, 'tis not likely you will make much of it in sermonizing, or that it will prove of much benefit to your hearers. Still, it sometimes happens, I may say, it often happens, that a subject totally uninteresting when first taken up, taken up it may be from a sheer sense of duty, gradually increases in interest until it wraps the soul in a flame of passionate fervour. Be that as it may, you may rest assured that when a subject is laden with spiritual benefit to yourselves, when it touches with life-giving influence the springs of your own intellectual and spiritual life, and lifts you into higher fellowship with the Divine-that is a call from heaven for you to preach it to others. There is yet another consideration that should rule you in the choice of subjects, namely, your own intellectual capacity and resource. And here, if I may speak my mind freely, I would say, that I had much rather see a young preacher aiming too high, stretching quite beyond the reach of his faculty, than for him to be content with treading the unvarying rounds, the beaten levels of pulpit thought, providing (and, mark you, this is an important proviso), he displays an energy and diligence in study proportioned to the height of his intellectual ambition. But in all cases, lofty flights are dangerous for birds not fully fledged. In the selection of your subjects show that you are governed by good common sense, that you have duly measured your capabilities, that you know what you can and what you cannot do. Don't appear as David in Saul's armour, don't attempt to wield the club of Hercules till you have acquired the requisite muscular power.

Having fixed upon the subject of a sermon, your first step is to

understand it. Seek then to understand it thoroughly. Don't content yourselves with surface views, with self-evident aspects. Go to the root of the matter, dig to its innermost recesses, examine its fundamental principles, woo and familiarise yourselves with its animating spirit. There is something in that subject which as yet nobody ever saw, and which waits to be seen and developed by you. Every man has a measure of original faculty. Every man has faculty for discovering what nobody else can discover. And every subject presents itself in different lights to different men. Nobody can look at this subject with your eyes. Concentrate your soul upon it, look it through and through, prolong your gaze, and 'twill be strange indeed if it do not unfold elements or aspects never seen before. Examine the subject also in its surroundings, in its relations to and connections with conterminous truth. If you fail in this, 'twill be impossible for you to treat your subject properly. Sometimes you hear a sermon full of good things, rich in thought, rich in argument, rich in illustration, but the good things are spoiled through lack of harmony with contiguous truth. If you wrench one truth out of its natural connections with neighbouring truths, you stamp it with the mark of falsehood, in fact it becomes falsehood in so far as the dislocation extends. Seek then to understand your subject in itself and in its surroundings. Use all available helps. But first and foremost use your own eyes upon the naked letter of the text. Fasten your mind upon it, cast it into the crucible of thought, smelt it by continuous and earnest reflection-the longer you continue this process the purer and more abundant will be the golden yield. Thence extend your view to the surrounding context and to parallel passages noted in the margin, or supplied by memory. Let the Bible be as much as possible its own interpreter. If you have ability to consult the orginal Greek or Hebrew text, so much the better; if not, don't be discouraged. Others have laboured, and you may enter into and reap the benefit of their labours. Works on sacred hermeneutics and criticism abound. Seek light wherever you are at all likely to find it, on Christian or on heathen ground. Avail yourselves as much as possible of the Biblical literature of Germany, such of it at least as has been placed within the reach of the English scholar by the Messrs. Clarke of Edinburgh. And while making diligent use of all other lawful means to understand the subject on which you propose to sermonise, don't forget seriously and fervently to pour out your souls in prayer to Almighty God that he may open your eyes to see the wonders of his law. He studies well who prays well.

Presuming you understand your subject, you will now proceed to construct your sermon. And here the work of thought properly begins. Your previous readings and investigations are all pre

liminary and preparatory to this. The first thing to be done here is to seize with firm intellectual grasp the spirit of your subject, its central, its governing principle. And be assured every subject has such a principle. You may not detect it readily, it may not obtrude on your view; secondary things may seem at first glance to hold an equal or even a higher place, but by concentrated and continuous study its supremacy will emerge, and all other things will declare their subordination. Fix your mind, then, upon this governing principle, and let the subsequent operations of your constructive faculty have reference to it. Thus your sermon will be stamped with the grand characteristic of unity. Every true work of art is a unity. No matter what other excellences a painting, a statue, a poem, or any artistic creation may have, if wanting in unity it is condemned by the laws of art. So far as a sermon is a creation of the intellect it is amenable to these laws, and therefore the preacher must see to it that his sermon be characterised by unity. A number of thoughts without natural affinity, without natural compact or coherence, loosely strung, or mechanically welded together, does not answer to the ideal of a sermon. A sermon must be one thing. It must have organic completeness and consistency. It must have a central life, pervading, animating, uniting, and harmonising all the parts of which it is composed.

Having seized the spirit of your subject, having grasped its relations to and bearings upon the subordinate matters with which it is immediately connected, you must then view it in reference to its practical design. Your aim in the business of sermonizing is not merely to construct a fine ideal work of art with the view of gratifying the æsthetic tastes of your hearers. Your work is preeminently practical in its design. Everything you attempt in the study as ministers of the gospel has to serve a practical end; to be worthy of you or of your office, it must directly contribute to the moral and spiritual elevation of your hearers. Your anxious inquiry must therefore be, How can I work this principle of Divine truth so as most effectually to secure its practical end? Every link in your sermon should be strung with reference to this end. Whatever sort of intellectual weapons you wield, whether you argue, or illustrate, or declaim, your ultimate aim must still be to make your subject yield the utmost possible amount of practical result.

In the construction of a sermon, let your plan be simple and natural. It is not necessary you should have a formal introduction to every sermon. Better have no introduction at all than one farfetched and unmeaning. If, for instance, your text happens to be in the Epistle to the Galatians, it does not thence follow you must begin your sermon by giving a history of the establishment of Christianity in Galatia, and of the heresies that followed. If the text touches expressly upon the peculiar spiritual condition of the

Galatian church, that may justify and require references to its previous history in the introduction, but the circumstance of a text being in that epistle does not of itself require or justify such an introduction. Let your introduction, if you have one, arise out of your subject, or out of its immediate connections; and let it be what it is called, an introduction, a natural, easy inlet to the body of the sermon, not a foreign excrescence tagged on to fill up space. Whether you have formal divisions in your sermon must be deter mined by the nature of the subject, or rather by the proclivities of your own minds. In the most of cases divisions are of use both to preacher and people, but they should be few and simple, serving just to indicate the main tracts of thought. Numerous and com plicated divisions tend to perplex and distract, interrupting the flow and connection of ideas, infringing upon the unity and lessening the momentum of the discourse. The divisions should be carefully marshalled in their logical order, so that each may reciprocally impart strength to, and receive strength from, its neighbours. Let the groundwork, the main texture of your sermon, be argumentative. I don't mean it to be formally so, for it would be bad taste and bad policy to make the pulpit an arena for polemical or logical fencing. Avoid as much as possible the appearance of a gladiator or polemic. Still, while shunning the forms of logic, let the substance of your sermon be arranged and wrought out with logical force, let the tissue of thought have strict logical consistency and coherence, let the main batteries you serve play upon the reason and conscience of your hearers. And yet, to give relief and point to argument make a free use of illustration. Don't be frightened to introduce the facts of history, or of science, or of common life; don't be frightened to lay the creations of imagination under contribution, providing they serve your purpose. At the same time remember, illustration is not to be used for show, but as a means to an end. Avoid the meanness of tricking out a sermon with gorgeous imagery for purposes of display. The main force of a sermon should augment towards the close. As it proceeds it should gather in momentum. The most of young preachers, and I fear the most of old ones, have the very bad fault of spending their strength on the earlier portions of a sermon, while the close is marked by extreme feebleness, and is, in fact, made up of the tag ends of thought. I suppose the mind gets jaded after working for a while on one and the same subject, and so, partly from lassitude and partly from the expectation that the friction of thought in preaching will supply what is left unfinished in study, the concluding portion of a sermon is usually the feeblest. This is a grave fault, and accounts, in some measure at least, for the usual listlessness of hearers as the sermon draws to a close. It was part of the military tactics of Napoleon when engaged in battle, to hold in reserve his celebrated