than any other; keeps his people on the alert; gives them a grand education; and cultivates in them an ever-growing rever ence and love for the Bible.

But while such benefits are apparent, some objections may arise, as, for example: How can a man feel any interest in a text which is remote from his ordinary thought? Suppose he comes upon the verse, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God" (Rom. xiii, 1). The origin and limits of civil government are among the things which be has never examined, and for which he has no taste; how then can he speak of them before a general audience, and especially before magis trates and jurists who have made them a lifelong study?

Turn the pale there will be a

As a matter of fact these difficulties which loom up so vast in the distance, vanish as they are approached. The preacher knows when the dreaded topic is coming and has ample time to read up. However dry and repulsive it may be at first, it will gain interest from being kept before the mind. flame of a blow-pipe upon a lump of lime, and glow like a furnace. It is a good thing, too, for a minister to be compelled to grapple with such a subject. It wakes him puts him on his mettle, enlarges his thinking, gives him new points of contact with his people, gives them fresh confidence in him, and furnishes an opportunity for him to lead them from the acknowledged allegiance due to human authority to the allegiance due to the Lord of all.

up,

Of course one must select, at the outset, an important bookone that has intrinsic interest and allows of popular treatment. Having once started upon the book he will find himself borne onward with an ever increasing momentum. Now and then he may have to work by sheer effort of will, producing only a dull sermon after all; but it may comfort him that he would do the same quite as frequently under the topical method. If, soinetimes, there is a desert to cross, he may find a green oasis somewhere upon it. Then, too, he will be always looking forward to the grand passages, as one who is tramping in the Alps pushes on with springy step when approching the Devil's Bridge, or as the pilgrim urges his horse over the barren hills of Judea, impatient to catch sight of the Holy City. Then,

too, he makes most surprising discoveries in out-of-the-way places, and clauses and words flash out a most unexpected meaning. Sometimes when a little phrase in a long paragraph has revealed to me a new and delightful lesson, I have thought how three of us went to Cambridge to see the stately colleges; and, after wandering among them all day long, we heard in the evening, by mere chance, a nightingale's song, which was sweeter and more satisfying than all the rest.

Perhaps you will ask, If one takes what comes in course, how can he adapt his preaching to the hour? I reply (1.) That with this method the preacher has one service each Sunday, at which he may select his topic. (2.) In his expositions he will often. find before him the very passage needed for the hour. There is something remarkable-providential-in regard to this. Many times the text which has come to me in course has seemed more opportune than I could have selected for myself. Thus, a season of quickened interest found me in the first chapter of 1 Peter with such topics before me as: "Begotten again unto a lively hope," the "incorruptible inheritance," the "tried faith more precious than gold that perisheth," "the salvation of your souls," "holy in all manner of conversation," "redeemed with the precious blood of Christ," "the glory of man as the flower of grass." When brethren were at strife and passed each other with averted faces, I could, without seeming to be personal, exhort them to "be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love," and to "overcome evil with good " (Rom. xii, 10, 21). On a Sunday when a collection was appointed for foreign missions, we chanced to be considering Paul's ambition to visit Spain that he might preach the gospel where Christ had not been named (Rom. xv, 20). When there were abuses in the municipal council, the passage was about governors being sent for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do well (1 Pet. ii, 14); and, in ignorant simplicity, I struck some harder and more specific blows than I should have dared to strike of set purpose. No method could, in the long run, have more of timeliness than this.

One expository preacher testifies that he finds his work "very fascinating." Whether a congregation will find it so or not, can be determined only by trial. My own people seem to

me exceptionally good hearers-intelligent and wide-awake. They have the expository sermon in the morning-when they are at their best. The same sermon might be wasted upon the more miscellaneous and floating congregation of the evening. A dull, illiterate people might be restive. After Robert Hall had been for some years at Leicester, he complained to an old parishioner from Cambridge that he found great difficulty in fixing upon new subjects; and he was advised to take up expositions as he had formerly done, greatly to the edification of his Cambridge congregation. Mr. Hall replied: "My people in Leicester do not like expositions. I have frequently tried them, and it does not do to expound when the people are not interested. My congregation, Sir, is composed principally of plain people who are engaged in manufactories, and who have not enjoyed the advantages of education. They are by no means so intellectual as our friends in Cambridge; I am sorry that they do not like expositions, for I am convinced that more solid instruction can be derived from them than from sermons. Mr. Hall, however, made the experiment once more, but gave it up "owing to the unconquerable aversion of his people to the plan."

My own impression is that the expository sermon, if it have grip, will take hold almost anywhere. Let it be the strong sermon of the day. It must be no goodish dilution of the text, no compilation of opinions from the commentators, no summary of the processes of a pedantic scholarship. The people do not care what De Wette, or Meyer, or Alford may have thought, and if you should cite one of those venerated names, they might ask, as a mercantile acquaintance of mine did in a circle where the conversation turned on William Shakspeare, "Where did that fellow do business?" Ellicott proclaimed in the preface to his first commentary that his only aim had been to determine the exact sense of Scripture on grammatical principles; but in subsequent prefaces he confessed that he had been obliged to modify his original desigu, that the dry bones of his grammatical skeleton needed to be clothed upon with flesh, and endowed with spirit and life. The preacher who would expound with success must avoid Ellicott's mis

*Greene's Reminiscences.

take. Dr. Holland classes all preachers as poetical and nonpoetical, and adds that the non poetical have no right to preach at all.* Expository sermonizing needs poetry as well as accuracy. "The virtue of books is, to be readable," says Mr. Emerson. One virtue of sermons is to be hearable, and when they are so, the people will hear.

As a matter of fact this kind of preaching, where faithfully tried, has secured variety, freshness, and timeliness in the topics of the pulpit, and has proved attractive and edifying to the pews. Dr. W. M. Taylor and Dr. John Hall, who are among the best expositors in this country, never lack for audiences. Prof. Phelps expresses the opinion that his Biblical course "saved his pulpit." These are great preachers; we should, doubtless, lag far behind them; but not farther, perhaps, in this kind of preaching than in every other.

"In exposition, where does the application come in?" inquires a friend. One reply is, All the way through. Let the whole sermon be addressed to the whole man. If truth is made self-evidencing, then as fast as it is uttered, it will find the hearer's heart. The "rational, unadulterated milk" (1 Pet. ii, 2,) is nourishing in every drop, the virtue of it being diffused through the whole and not all condensed in the last swallow. But, while the whole sermon should go home to the consciousness, there may be, with a long text as well as with a short one, a gathering up of all that has been said in a vigorous summary, and a true oratorical conclusion. Indeed, the homiletic habit so clings to the preacher (and rightly) that he can close nothing without an application; and mine, at this time, shall be this: If you believe that expository preaching has the advantages which have been named, and so has claims upon your ministry, then-try it!

*Letters to the Joneses.

REV. WILLIAM CRAWFOrd.

+ Society and Solitude, p. 62.

ARTICLE IV.-PRINCIPLES OF DOMESTIC TASTE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE YALE SCHOOL OF THE FINE ARTS.

BY PROFESSOR EDWARD E. SALISBURY.

THE subject I desire to bring before you is the Principles of Domestic Taste. Will it be objected, in advance, that there is no disputing about tastes-that, for each individual, whatever is to his or her taste is tasteful? and that, especially with respect to domestic arrangements, everyone is a law to himself? But, although I shall have to condemn some things which seem to me to violate good taste, my purpose is, mainly, to give expression to certain principles, which all must agree in recognizing as true and fundamental, as soon as put into words, yet which need to be brought out and emphasized, in order to their becoming more widely influential. Of course, I speak only as an amateur.

The first thing which it occurs to me to say on this subject, is that the idea of home lies at the foundation of all true domestic taste. There was a time, in the history of man, when the most primitive conception of a human habitation, as a place of shelter, was all that guided in the construction and furnishing of the house. We see traces of this in the rude huts, or moving tents, of certain barbarous tribes still existing, though even in the most primitive habitation it is a rare thing not to find some intimations of the sanctities of home, and some sense of beauty. Perhaps what first consecrated the house as a home may have been the religious instinct, bringing to the domestic hearth a reverence for higher powers, and a consequent spirit of self-control; for it is highly probable that the earliest temples of antiquity, set apart for abiding places of the gods, were modeled after human habitations. This could scarcely have been the case before the latter had begun to gather to themselves an atmosphere of sanctity.

But what riches of meaning invest the idea of home! No place for disguises, nor for mysteries of shame, it is at once sacred to retirement, and appropriate to an open frankness; not given for the indulgence of ignoble indolence, rest and repose