Let any one examine the twenty-six volumes of the "American National Preacher." Here are about seven hundred sermons from distinguished ministers of the various evangelical denominations in this country, which may be taken as a fair exhibition of the American Pulpit for more than a quarter of a century. One thing will strike the mind with painful surprise, on a careful examination of the work, viz., the manifest falling off in what may be called Bible preaching. The Preacher" holds its own, it may be, as to talent, learning, literature, accomplishment -in all that constitutes the intellectual and the esthetic-but, alas in deep piety and spirituality, in an earnest pleading with sinners, in moral power, as to the marrow and fatness of the gospel, one is constrained to say, "O the leanness, the leanness!" It does one's soul good to read the sermons in the earlier volumes from the pens of Mason, Green, Griffin, Alexander, Beecher, Rice, Skinner, Woods, Porter, Hyde, Dickinson, Spring, Humphrey, Fiske, Clarke, and Miller, and others like them, who then gave tone and power to our pulpit. There is an affluence of Scripture thought, language and illustration, a depth of Christian experience, a divine unction, a power of appeal, a grappling with the conscience, a masterly exhibition and application of the simple Word of God, that will move any man and stir the soul within him. And the successive Conductors of that highly useful work all complain of the difficulty of getting sermons of a Scriptural or practical character. While it were easy to obtain what are termed in the popular language of the times, "talented" sermons, "brilliant" sermons, "original" sermons, "learned and elaborate" sermons, "finished and polished" sermons, in any quantity, it is almost impossible to draw forth sermons so imbued with the spirit, and power of the Bible as to be likely to convert souls, and feed and nourish a Scripture piety in the church. Either such sermons are not commonly preached now a days, or their authors have no confidence in them, and are ashamed to print them. There are some noble exceptions to this remark, and, what is a significant fact, they belong mainly to the older portion of the ministry. The change I speak of is more marked and common among our younger brethren, showing a serious defect either in their theological training, or in the models after which their pulpit taste and style have been formed. Not long since, a godly and able minister said to a brother, "O that my pastor would give us something beside pretty flowers, and brilliant periods, and intellectual treats, and lofty flights of eloquence; my soul is famishing for the bread of lifeI long for something simple, nourishing, substantial." And yet that pastor occupies a very distinguished place among our younger preachers, and is the model after which not a few of them are seeking to form their own preaching.

This class of facts, and I apprehend the observation of you all will confirm and add to it, goes to show that there is a

lamentable deficiency in that kind of preaching which commends itself to men's consciences, and which alone God honours in the salvation of souls. God has never honoured mere talent and learning and rhetoric and logic and accomplishment-however distinguished, in his ministers. "Not by might" of human strength and display, "nor by power" of worldly wisdom and gifts, "but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." The most gifted and popular ministry may be utterly barren of the "fruits of the Spirit." And are we not cursed with a curse-are not revivals of religion growing less and less frequent and general-are not pride and ambition and worldliness and the love of display and the spirit of unholy rivalry and dissension, creeping into the ministry and into all our churches, as, in part at least, the result of the deficiency here complained of? Is not this one of the main causes of that sad declension of religion over which we are called to mourn? May not this be the reason why the evangelical Pulpit of our day has so little power with the world ?

I do know that there are not a few laymen in our churches, and, among the number, many distinguished for their intelligence standing and worth, who grieve over this defect, and feel and do not hesitate to declare that the popular style of preaching is not to their taste; does not profit them; and who long for a more simple preaching of the Word of God. Daniel Webster expressed the feelings of thousands like him, in the church and out of it, when he said, in a criticism on a learned and able discourse to which he had listened, "If clergymen in our day would return to the simplicity of the gospel, and preach more to individuals and less to the crowd, there would not be so much complaint of the decline of true religion. Many of the ministers of the present day take their text from from St. Paul and preach from the newspapers. When they do so, I prefer to enjoy my own thoughts rather than listen. I want my pastor to come to me in the spirit of the gospel, saying, You are mortal; your probation is brief; your work must be done speedily. You are immortal too. You are hastening to the bar of God; the Judge standeth before the door." When I am thus admonished, I have no disposition to muse or to sleep." The rebuke is deserved; would that we all might heed and profit by it!

It were not difficult to account for the change which has com over the pulpit in our day; the fault is in the times more than in the ministry. We live in a new age of the world. Twenty-five years have given birth to immense changes. We are flooded with new ideas. The boundaries of knowledge are greatly enlarged. A powerful impulse has been given to the human mind. Mankind have cut loose from old notions. New tastes and habits and forms of life have come into being. The sober and the real, the contemplative, the substantial and the supernatural, are displaced by the ideal, the excitable, the impulsive

would deal with any other book. It is wonderful how the heart of man responds to the simple Word of God-responds though that word be mainly a matter of faith and of conscience; and nothing can compensate for keeping that word in the back-ground, or making it subordinate.

This is one of the essential elements of Bible preaching; and eundeniably much of the preaching of the times is lamentably wanting in it. I fear there is a wide-spread and growing deficiency just on this fundamental point. How much of it is attributable to lax views in regard to the inspiration of all Scripture-or to the introduction of German theology and literature into our country-or to a desire to adapt preaching to the peculiar spirit and genius of the age-I am not able to say. That a decided and extensive change has come over the pulpit in this respect during a single generation, must be apparent to all who have had any opportunity for observing. The spirit if not the principles of Rationalism and Naturalism is fast gaining ground among us. What is meant by this remark is simply, a tendency to look at man and the system of salvation from other standpoints than the stand-point of divinely inspired and revealed truth. It was among the very last services which Professor Stuart rendered to the church to pen a most emphatic and solemn warning to his brethren on this very point. Never more than now was there wanted a ministry rooted and grounded in their convictions of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, and disposed to honour and insist upon the authority of the Scriptures as absolute and sufficient, and above suspicion.

stance of it.

3. Bible preaching must of course be the preaching of the BIBLE itself. Not only must the Bible be the groundwork of it, and the authority to enforce it, but the staple of it also, the sum and subOur simple business is to unfold and vindicate, enforce and apply the meaning or truths of the Bible. We are to set forth the facts, doctrines, principles, and life of the Divine Word, in all their fulness, and seck to give them their practical effect in their varied relations. In doing this we may use our own language or Bible language-adopt the topical or textual mode of preaching-the expository or sermonic form-preach from one text or ten-follow the order of books, or go as judgAll this relates to the ment and the Spirit of God may guide us.

manner and is subordinate. The great thing is to get the meaning, the teaching, and the spirit of God's own Book fairly and forcibly before the minds, and into the hearts, and down upon the consciences of our hearers.

No one it is supposed really doubts this And yet, brethren, it is no easy thing to preach thus ;-it is not the popular way of preaching in these times. The pressure of great and manifold temptations is constantly upon us to preach quite "another gospel"-a gospel of philosophy, and literature, and rhetoric-or a gospel of mere social reforms, and humanitarian notions, and

transcendental affinities-in order to meet the wants, or keep pace with the supposed progress of the age. Is it not an alarming fact that doctrinal, expository, and even textual preaching has well nigh ceased from our pulpit? The good old practice of quoting Scripture freely from the Pulpit has nearly passed away. There are more frequent quotations from the Poets and the Classics in multitudes of modern sermons, than from the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels! Indeed, such is the cast, the level, the genius of not a small portion of our present preaching that the plain and simple, the sober and matter-of-fact language and sentiment of the Bible, would be quite out of place in it-would be thought tame and common-place, and would offend fastidious ears. I do believe that the ministry of our day are greatly at fault here. I do fear, brethren, that we yield too much to the demands of this polite, fastidious, esthetic, and would-be-thought highly cultivated and philosophic age. I do think that our sermons have come to partake too much of the popular Lecture, and the Essay form, and that we need to come back to primitive models to that preaching which is "eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures." THE BIBLE, THE WHOLE BIBLE, AND NOTHING BUT THE BIBLE—oh,if this were the motto of all who exercise the gospel ministry, the Bible would not so often to fail prove the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. But how many are mere philosophers, or lecturers, or essayists, or poetizers, or declaimers in the pulpit, where Christ and his cross are the only fitting theme, and where the words of truth and soberness only become the dying lips which speak to dying souls. The late DR. ERSKINE MASON-himself with all his erudition and his philosophic mind a beautiful exemplification of the sentiment, once nade this pregnant and instructive remark: Brethren, be as much of the philosopher as you please in your study, but in the pulpit, never."

4. Finally, Bible preaching must embrace the exhibition of the spirit and divine life of the Scriptures. The letter killeth, while the spirit maketli alive. Not only must our preaching be grounded in the Scriptures, and enforced by their authority, and fairly drawn from them, but it must take its peculiar inspiration and moral character from them. A man must himself drink into the spirit of the Bible-enter its inmost sanctuary--understand it both experimentally and critically and have his intellectual and spiritual being in the Bible-must experience the power of God in his soul, and know the positive experimental side of Christianity-he must love to study and pry into the Bible, and dwell in that world of spiritual light and wonders, before he can truly and effectively preach the Bible. And the more intelligent piety there is in the preacher-the more familiar he is with the inner life of the Scriptures-and the more he comes under the baptism of that same Holy Spirit which indites and dwells in the Word, the more truly and powerfully will he be likely to preach it.

And here again, I am constrained to believe, there is a manifest deficiency extensively and increasingly prevalent in the ministry. While the labors of modern scholars have shed much new and important light on the literature of the Bible and secured, in some instances, a better rendering and interpretation of the text, still, I think it will be admitted, that there is a sad declension of the evangelical spirit, a loss in the items of real piety and experimental preaching. The Pulpit of our times -times, too, demanding eminent spirituality and holiness in the ministry is far from being as thoroughly evangelical, as decided and deep-toned in its piety, as spiritual and experimental in its ministrations, or as fully imbued with the life-giving spirit of a positive Christianity and of the Holy Ghost, as it should be! This is doubtless our great deficiency and besetting sin. We have not enough of the spirit of Christ and of Paul for such evil times as these.

This is our idea of Bible preaching. The Bible, as God's inspired and supernatural revelation, must underlie it, must give authority to it, must be the theme and matter of it, must give inspiration and power to it. Preaching must be of this kind, and every sermon after this model, or it is not Bible preaching, or a gospel sermon, whatever else it may be.

It were not difficult to name examples of such a stamp of preaching, From the specimens we have of Christ's preaching, it was eminently characterized by the qualities which have been named. He preached strait at the hearts and consciences of his hearers, in language, simple, pointed, and authoritative. He aimed to impress them with the fact of their individual responsibility to God-to convict them of sin, and make them tremble in view of it, and of a coming judgment, So Peter preached on the day of Pentecost. Every word of that famous sermon was like a barbed arrow to pierce and rankle in the conscience. So Paul preached. Profoundly erudite and accomplished as he was, he would know nothing at Jerusalem, or Rome, or Athens, or Corinth, or Antioch, but "Christ, and him crucified." We all know how Barter preached, and what it was that made his preaching so powerful. It was his plain, honest, fearless, direct, faithful, intense application of God's own authoritative Word to men's consciences. Look, too, at the sermons of the great Edwards. It was not his masterly metaphysics, his profound philosophy, his intellectual demonstrations, or his parade of learning, that made him such a giant in the pulpit-there is a singular absence of these in his sermons. But he got strait down upon the sinner's conscience, and there dealt his earnest blows with almost superhuman effect. In his sermon on the Judgment Day, we are told, that he so impressed upon his hearers the sense of personal guilt and interest in its decisions that when he closed, they actually looked up in terror