ing. In creased knowledge of the Bi ble. Advantages i. The first and most obvious result of such the holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to a knowledge of the same," but to exercise a thoughtful and discriminating judgment, sanctified of course by prayer and secret communion with God, on the doctrines which he preaches as in accordance with them. For he also expresses his determination to "teach nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that which he is persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture." So that diligent study, intelligent enquiry, and individual conviction are, according to this promise, to form the foundation of our sermons, and it is therefore plain that we must not let our theological reading stop with the point which it reached when we were twenty-four years of age, but that, throughout our whole ministerial career, our preaching must be freshened and invigorated by our constant growth in scriptural knowledge, and that in setting Christian truth before our people we must remember the warning, attributed on no weak evidence to our Blessed Lord Himself, to be like "careful money-changers, rejecting the base, and holding fast the good coin"". Thus shall we instruct as well as exhort, and persuade our hearers to investigate God's word for themselves. And this is a most necessary part of our work, for people who 1 Clem. Alex. Strom. I. p. 425. Other ancient writers quote this saying as Christ's, and there are perhaps allusions to it in I Thess. v. 21, 1 Joh. iv. 1. Christian a subject for reflec tion and tention, have little leisure for serious reading require to have their attention directed to studies, the interest and importance of which may not naturally occur to them, especially in days when, in spite of much theological excitement among certain classes of society, there are other classes who scarcely seem to regard Christianity as a proper object for thought and reflection. ii. And this brings me to another religious evil truth made of the day, second only in importance to the common ignorance of the true meaning and object of Scripmental at- ture, if it is not rather a chief cause of that ignorance. Many persons seem to suppose that the Gospel is hardly addrest at all to the reason and understanding, but only to the feelings. Hence they do not expect sermons to contain arguments, and explanations of intellectual difficulties, and therefore to require thoughtful attention; but rather merely to state and restate familiar doctrines; or to excite such passions as love, hope, fear, and gratitude, and enforce spiritual and moral duties by appealing to them. From so gross an error all really thoughtful and adequately instructed Christians, whether troubled or not by modern speculation, must obviously be free; but it is nevertheless often met with in more forms than one. Young men, who have read and thought a little, sometimes appear to consider that the Bible, as a mental guide, is superseded by the writings of Emerson, Carlyle, and similar preachers of a doctrine supposed to be more in accordance with the wants of the nineteenth century; though they continue to frequent our churches, from the necessity of some form of worship, and the difficulty of finding a new one. Many persons again, though educated, in the ordinary sense of the term, have hardly yet learned to think at all, except on their worldly business and amusements, but they acquiesce in Christianity as a matter of course, and in public prayers and sermons as a part of the traditionary duties and occupations of life. Now an expository sermon, if it is worthy of the name, and enters at all closely and minutely into the meaning of Scripture, endeavouring not to found upon a text mere vague declamation, but to draw from it special and appropriate lessons, is at least a protest against all tendencies to separate Christian teaching from the exercise of reflection. In preaching one of these sermons to a congregation unprepared for its peculiar character, I have often been struck by the manner in which some of the hearers, according to traditional habit, have hastily opened their Bibles, and turned out the text, shewing it to their neighbours, the husband perhaps to the wife, or more commonly the wife to the husband, and then after closing the book, have prepared for that alternation of occasional attention with dreamy vacancy, in which people generally listen to sermons, without even reopening it when the design of the sermon was announced, and the paraphrase or explanation of the day's epistle actually begun; simply, I suppose, because they do not regard a sermon as a subject for intelligent interest. Yet it is clearly of small importance to look out the text, unless the preacher has unhappily an indistinct voice, but of great importance to keep the means of checking and verifying his explanations constantly at hand. Now this apparent indifference to the intellectual element in Christianity is doubtless due, in the first place, to the constant presence of this world's absorbing interests, which must always operate, more or less, to make men careless of their highest duties and only lasting hopes, but it is also I think traceable to some more special characteristics of our own age. One of these is that tendency to separate religion from our common life and duties, and to raise a marked barrier between what is Christian and what is secular, against which the whole framework of the Church of England is a visible protest, against which Wilberforce so bravely and faithfully contended in Parliament, and Arnold in our seats of education, but which is liable to increase with the increase of material prosperity and intellectual activity, and civil freedom (precious as these blessings are in themselves), from the obvious temporary convenience of |