When the unmeasur'd firmament bursts to disclose her light,

And all the signs in heaven are seen that glad the shepherd's heart."

Such, in a very different style, is Pope's (Il. xii. 322-8) "Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,

Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom,
The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame, what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honor'd if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give."

We can quote no such passage from Lord Derby.

ARTICLE IV.-EXPOSITORY PREACHING.

On the subject of expository, or what we may better perhaps call commentary preaching, we have to say, as if addressing some young clerical friend:

I. Try it, by all means. It will afford you as wide a field in which to expatiate as you can desire, and as rich as it is wide. You have the whole vast field of revealed truth over which to roam; and, in your excursions, you will find ample room for the exercise of your varied gifts, and abundant opportunity to regale the purest tastes of the imagination and the noblest affections of the heart.

"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers,

But the whole boundless continent is ours."

You are not chained up to the cramping necessity of being only a formal sermonizer, a logician, a reasoner, a theologian, an automaton; but you have the liberty of just being yourself, the whole living, breathing, glowing man, with heart throbbing, pulse beating, lungs heaving, blood circulating, nerves thrilling, and all the senses, functions, and susceptibilities of the animated being in full and unfettered play.

Nor are you confined to one particular mode of traversing the region before you, nor to one and the same beaten track. You quit the close carriage, the dusty cars, the monotonous railroad, and instead of being borne along half asleep over a dead level, through out-lying, deserted fields, across desolate and dull-looking plains, you go at liberty over hill and dale, through orchards and meadows, along by still waters, and into green pastures; now rising to the top of Pisgah, Sinai, and Olivet; now moving along the vales where moulder the bones of kings and patriarchs, of Joseph, of David, of Solomon, and of the prophets; now bathing in the waters of Jordan, of Genneseret, of the Red Sea, or even of the river of life proceeding out

of the throne of God and of the Lamb; now plucking the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, or a sprig of hyssop that springs out of the wall; now tarrying for a night at Engèdi, at Hebron, or at Jerusalem; you have an endless variety, both for instruction and entertainment. You have song and parable, precept and prophecy, proverb and psalmody, history and biography, sermon and miracle, whatever is striking in individual or national life, in the inner or outer man, in providential or moral government. And you have it, not in the stiff, artificial setting of the schools, according to art and man's device, but in the pure, spontaneous, natural economy that God loves. Thus you become furnished unto every good word and work, every shade and application of truth. You carry into the pulpit, not merely a specimen brick, but the whole beauteous temple, alive with devout worshipers, resounding with the rich songs and sentiments of Zion, and full of the glory of the Lord. You take along with you, not a plucked rose, half withered in your hand, but the whole bush, growing and blooming with all the beauty and freshness of Eden. You make your hearers feel, not that they are sitting bolt upright in the slips of a meeting-house, according to the conventional proprieties of the occasion, but that they are rambling at liberty with you over the luxuriant fields of scripture, breathing the fresh and balmy air, absorbed with the ever-varying scenes of interest and glory that open before them-standing, perhaps, by the pool of Bethesda-watching the Saviour's miracles-listening to the gracious words of his mouth-looking into the faces of the wonder-stricken apostles, of the charmed and astonished multitude, of the scowling and self-conceited Pharisees going with him in tender sympathy and fellowship to Bethany, to Gethsemane, to Calvary, to Emmaus, to heaven-now bowing before his cross, now bathing his feet with tears, now exulting with the angels in his triumphant ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high. You make them forget where they are, while they seem to themselves to be where they are not. They are at the cave of Machpelah; they are in the congregation of Israel at the foot of the mount; they are engaged with the workmen in building the

tabernacle or the temple; they are marching around the walls of Jericho; they are with Jeremiah in the dungeon; they are with Ezekiel by the river of Chebar; they are with the storm-tossed disciples on the lake; they are with the beloved John in the Isle of Patmos; they are walking the streets of the New Jerusalem; they are anywhere you please to take them, in sympathy with any scene you choose to portray, not knowing for the time whether they are at home or abroad, in the body or out of the body. They go with you where you go; they are entranced by the visions that you behold; they feel the truths and sentiments that you express; and old things become new, and fresh, and vivid to their minds as a present reality. And thus you can teach the soundest doctrines, and even the hardest doctrines, without their suspecting, for the moment, that you are aiming to be doctrinal at all. You can impress them with a sense of native depravity, by showing them human nature, as depicted to the very life, in the Bible. You can make them feel what repentance is, by taking them to Bochim, by mingling among the captives by the rivers of Babylon, by being present when Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost, and by reproducing the imagery and spirit of many a miracle, parable, and narrative. You can bring out faith to their apprehension, in the life of Abraham, Moses, Daniel, the Syro-Phoenician woman, and in a multitude of instances, under a great variety of circumstances and influences. You can show the difference between a weak faith and a strong faith, by contrasting Gideon before he went down by stealth to the host of the Midianites, and overheard the story of the barley-cake dream, and after his return from that reconnoissance; by marking the difference between the Israelites in the wilderness and the Israelites on the other side of Jordan; by comparing the nobleman and the centurion; and the like. "Come down and heal my son," said the nobleman, not having sufficient faith to believe that Christ could heal him at a distance; and Jesus would not go. "I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed," said the centurion; and Jesus was ready to go with him in a moment. Specimens of unbelief also are exhibited everywhere in the scrip

tures, and in almost every conceivable form and degree. And the difference between a true and a false faith may be seen in the marching of the Israelites into the trough of the Red Sea, on the ground of a divine warrant, and the Egyptians doing the same thing in following after, without any such warrant; as also by comparing the offerings of Abel and Cain; the incense burning of Nadab and Abihu, and that of the priests; the motives of Simon Magus, and those of the apostles; and other instances. You can preach the doctrine of electim by contrasting Jacob with Esau, the children of Israel with other nations, the penitent with the impenitent thief on the cross, and so on. You have an example of imputed righteousness in the treatment of the returned prodigal; and of its being despised and rejected in the case of the man without the wedding garment. You have the saint's perseverance in the recovery of David and Peter after their fall, and in the steadfast adherence of the apostles to Christ, when many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. There is no doctrine, no case of conscience, no point of ethics, no sin or foible in human nature or actual life, that you cannot hit off in the most effectual, inoffensive, matter-of-fact way, by some arrow drawn directly from the quiver of the Bible. And when your hearers see that you are using God's armory, and no other, they will meekly and humbly submit to the two-edged blows, even if they do cut to the quick.

And besides, you will make them fall in love with the Bible. It will be a new book to them, full of life-like pictures that they had never before observed; and they will go home to search it as for hid treasures, and will find them, too. "I had no idea there was so much in it," says one. "We men of business, who are mostly engaged in secular pursuits, should never have fished up these pearls for ourselves," says another. "How entertaining, as well as instructive," says a third; "it is equal to a romance." The people perhaps know enough about the Westminister Catechism, and the five points of Calvinism; but they generally know quite too little about the Bible-its imagery and symbol, its poetry and narrative, its exhibitions of God in the perfections of his character, and in his ever-pres