a natural way.

[Sidenote: The Popular Way]

It may become the most popular form of preaching. Indeed, it should become so. The fault is ours, i.e. the ministers', if such is not the case. We should keep at it till we learn to do it well. We should besiege the throne of grace for power and wisdom to do it well. Who doubts that the Author of the Holy Scriptures would answer such entreaties? Chalmers' lectures on Romans, Archbishop Leighton's lectures on First Peter, F. W. Robertson's on First Corinthians, are old, but standard types of what may be done in this respect. I doubt not that Archbishop Trench delivered the substance of his book on the Epistles to the Seven Churches to his congregation before it appeared in print; and so in the case of Bishop Ryle and his Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, and Dr. Moule and his Studies in Philippians. I, myself, have seen large congregations held from week to week in city churches, where the chief attraction was the exposition of the Bible text. God wrote the Bible for the "common people," and it is irreverent to suppose that they cannot be interested in the reading and explanation of it. There is no other book in the world which sells like God's Book; it leads the market! How short-sighted, then, are we ministers who fail to take advantage of the fact, and utilise it to draw our audiences, and interest them, and nourish them with the bread of life! [1]

[1] A part of what the author has here written on the subject of expository preaching formed the substance of a previous communication from his pen in Current Anecdotes, a monthly magazine for ministers, F. M. Barton, Cleveland.