experience of any others, but I have been guilty of cultivating in my people a vitiated taste for preaching, and henceforth, by God's help, I intend to give them His own Word." To search the Scriptures on their own account, the people of our churches must acquire a taste for their contents. They must be constantly fed with the bread of life to have an appetite for it. They will "desire the sincere milk of the word," if so be "they have tasted that the Lord is gracious." But to what extent do they "taste" it in the ordinary pulpit ministrations of the day?

[Sidenote: Secretary Shaw]

The Honourable Leslie M. Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, gave an address recently in Washington, on the occasion of a Sunday school jubilee, which interested the writer deeply. He was pleading for the Sunday school on the ground that it was the only place at present in which the Bible was taught. "It is not now taught in the public schools," said he, "nor am I here to say that it ought to be taught there. In our busy life it is not taught in our homes. The head of the family ought to be a priest, but the Bible is seldom read, much less taught, in the home. It is seldom taught in the pulpit. Not that I am criticising the ministry. But take up a paper and see what the sermons are to be about. You will learn about the plan of salvation if you listen to the sermons, but you will not know much about the Bible if you depend on getting your knowledge of it from the pulpit." He then went on to say that "the only place on this earth where the Bible is taught is in the Sunday school." When, however, we consider the character of the average Sunday school, the scraps and bits of the Bible there taught, the brief period of time devoted to the teaching, the lack of discipline in the classes, and the inadequate training and preparation of the average teacher, we begin to inquire, Where is the Bible taught? and wonder whether we have fallen on the times of the prophet:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord; and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.—Amos 8:11, 12.

[Sidenote: Professor Mathews on the Sunday School]

I am with Professor Shailer Mathews, D.D., in some of his strictures on the modern Sunday school, if only it be allowed that there are not a few blessed exceptions to the rule he lays down. I do not know how we should agree as to a remedy for present conditions, but one remedy would be, where there is a Bible expositor in the pulpit, to do away with certain features of the Sunday school altogether for the time being. The infant or primary departments might be retained as they are, and possibly the Bible classes for older adults, but the intermediate classes would do well to be gathered together under the instruction only of the pastor himself. In time, such a plan would beget enough teachers of the right quality and spirit to return to the former method if desired. The cabinet officer's warning and appeal are timely, for an awful harvest of infidelity and its attendant evils must be reaped in the next generation should the Church fail to arise to her responsibility as to the teaching of the unadulterated Word of God in the present one.

It is for this reason that the writer pleads with his brethren to make expository preaching the staple of their pulpit ministrations. Should they have read the previous chapters in a sympathetic spirit, they will begin to do this without much urging even where they have been strangers to it hitherto. But if otherwise, then a further word, before our concluding chapter, as to the history and practicality of that kind of preaching, may throw them back on what has been said before in such a way as to catch the spirit of it and be influenced by it.

[Sidenote: Expository Sermons Defined]

Expository sermons differ from the textual not so much in kind as in degree. For example, the text is usually longer, and more attention is given to the explanation of the words. The text, indeed, may cover several verses, a whole chapter, or parts of more than one chapter. And the treatment need not necessarily be confined to the definition of words, but include the adjustment of the text to the context, and the amplification and illustration of the various ideas suggested.

Dr. James W. Alexander, from whose Thoughts on Preaching I draw generously in what follows, says:

[Sidenote: The Notion of a Sermon]

"Suppose a volume of human science to be placed in our hands as the sole manual or textbook to elucidate to a public assembly, in what way would it be most natural to go to work? Certainly we would not take a sentence here, and another there, and upon these separate portions frame one or two discourses every week! No interpreter of Aristotle or Littleton would dream of doing that. Nor was it adopted in the Christian Church, until the sermon ceased to be regarded in its true notion, as an explanation of the Scripture, and began to be viewed as a rhetorical entertainment, which might afford occasion for the display of subtlety, research and eloquence."

[Sidenote: Inspired Sermons]

The same author recites some interesting facts that might be summed up under the general head of the history of expository preaching. For example, he reminds us that as early as the time of Ezra we find the reading of the law accompanied with some kind of interpretation. See Nehemiah 8. In the synagogues, moreover, after the reading of the law and the prophets, it was usual for the presiding officer to invite such as were learned to address the people, and it was in this way that our blessed Lord Himself—as well as His apostles, subsequently—was given the opportunity to open up the Scriptures. See our Lord's discourse in the synagogue at Nazareth, reported in the fourth of Luke, and observe that it was an expository treatment of Isaiah 61. Notice, also, the discourses of Peter and Paul in the book of the Acts.

[Sidenote: The Christian Fathers]

The early Christian assemblies adopted this method in their religious services, as we may judge from allusions and examples in the writings of Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine and Chrysostom. Their homilies, especially in the instances of the last mentioned two, were usually of the nature of "a close interpretation, or running commentary on the text, followed by a practical application." Chrysostom, quoted by Neander, says: "If anyone assiduously attend public worship, even without reading the Bible at home, but carefully hearkening here, he will find a single year sufficient to give him an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures." In how many of our churches could the same be said to-day? But ought it not to be said in all?

Dr. Alexander is further sponsor for the statement that it was about the beginning of the thirteenth century when the method of preaching from insulated texts came into vogue, and the younger clergy adopted subtle divisions of the sermon. And he says, too, that it was warmly opposed by some of the best theologians of the age, as "a childish playing upon words, destructive of true eloquence, tedious and unaffecting to the hearers, and cramping the imagination of the preachers." He is not prepared to entirely accept this criticism of the theologians, however, nor am I, believing that both the topical and the textual methods of preaching have their attractions and advantages. [Sidenote: The Reformation Period] Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to record that "when the light of divine truth began to emerge