ences, the Faith that overcometh the world, the Charity that covereth the multitude of sins, and the Hope full of immortality. And Religion is before him in all her terrors-the lake of sulphur, the smoke of torment, the withering conscience, the affrighted soul, and the fire that is never quenched, and the worm that will never die. Heaven, and earth, and hell, are before him; all history, all experience, all prophecy; angels, demons, and men; life, death, and immortality; the changes of time, and unchangeable eternity!

These, brethren, are the themes of the Christian preacher. But O let him beware lest the grandeur of his subjects betray him into an undue exaltation of himself! Let him speak not for himself, but as the oracles of God. The doctrine, said Jesus to the Jews, is not mine, but His that sent me1. Shall the perfect master say this, and shall the frail disciple say less? O when we exhort and when we reprove, we are but as the vocal reeds, transmitting voices not our own. Woe to that preacher who preaches not God, but himself! If he bend to any human party; if he speak to please this or that particular sect; if he institute any cowardly compromise with the wisdom or with the folly of the times; if, for fear of offence, he pare down the word of God to the level of human frailty; if the praise of men be his object

1 These words occurred in the second Lesson for the day.

instead of the truth of God, the rewards of mammon instead of the cross of Christ; far better had it been for him and for his hearers had he never accepted a task he is unfit for. Yea, though his eloquence should be sweeter than that of angels-though his voice should alternately be silver-tongued and trumpet-tongued, to charm men with the one or to terrify them with the other— though his memory should be stored with all the records of departed time, and his wisdom should dive into all the secrets of futurity, yet his preaching after all will be little better than a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, a solemn part to be gravely acted in the motley drama of human politics! It will resemble in its effects those oriental fruits that are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the smell, but which wither at the touch, and turn to ashes on the lips.

One path, and one only, lies open to the Christian preacher. He may, indeed, vary his language in a thousand ways; he is justified in drawing collateral aid from other sources, to avoid that monotony which in the long run produces uselessness; but to one great point, to the one thing truly needful, he must incessantly revert. As there is but one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and in all, and through us all, so the unchanging counsel of that Eternal Being is the one great truth he is commissioned to declare; in season and out of season,

through evil report and through good report, from the first time that he ascends a pulpit to his last time of addressing a congregation, he must tread, though humbly and at an immeasurable distance, in the path which the great Apostle trod; and with him he must gird the armour of the Spirit, and "rightly divide the word of truth," and hold the judgments of men in no account, while, according to his conscience, and according to the Bible, he shuns not to declare ALL the counsel of God.

In repeating these words, I have laid some stress on the word all, because that little word contains a secret of great import. It is the neglect of this that has created all those heresies that rend the bosom of the church of Christ, and tear his seamless coat into a thousand fragments. Men are too apt to study the Bible as they would a mere human work to dwell on the particular doctrines that they fancy, and to affect to forget the rest. Now in reading any other book than the Bible, we have an undoubted right to consult our own taste, and to make each man his own selections. But we

have no right to deal thus with the word of God. Parts of it, indeed, may delight and refresh us more than others; for that divine book has food for every taste. The plain matter of fact mind may love to dwell on the simple historical narratives. The refined poetical mind may find in Job, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, a perpetual source of lofty exaltation. The tender mind will revert for

ever to the exquisite pathos of the last chapters of St. John. The argumentative mind will delight in tracing through all its windings the powerful reasoning of St. Paul. The mystical mind may wander in a pleasing maze, while it attempts to unravel the marvels of the Apocalypse. All this is lawful, and the very different styles in which the inspired penmen wrote, some simple, some tender, some sublime, were doubtless so permitted, nay, graciously ordained by Providence, that all classes of readers might find a spiritual feast, each to suit his own frame of mind. But through all this variety, one same spirit pervades the whole. Truth is one and indivisible. ALL Scripture was given by inspiration of God, and if all the doctrines emanate equally from Him, what preacher can be justified in narrowing the Almighty, and suppressing some of his truths to exalt the others? Yet there are too many in whose partial eyes that word, which, if true at all, must be true in all its bearings, and, everywhere at harmony with itself, has no other authority than that which they invest it with, when they use it as an engine to effect a particular purpose. Thus one dwells on the mysteries alone; another holds forth only the moral influences of the Gospel. One takes up the holiness of Christ, to the exclusion of his miracles; another, his cross, to the exclusion of his example. One falsely tells us of our own power to serve God efficaciously by

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our own efforts; another eloquently descants on salvation through the blood of Christ, but keeps out of sight the necessity of striving to walk in his steps as children of light.

To hear one, you might think that works alone can save you, and that there can be a remission without shedding of blood. To hear another, you might think that to call out Lord, Lord, is all that heaven can require; that prayer is not a companion of, but a substitute for, holiness; and that, provided we profess to believe as Christians, we may safely live on as heathens. And all these, to whatever sect they belong, are ready with chapter and verse to prove by the Bible that they are right, and that their neighbours are wrong; and the most contradictory errors are all fathered upon the Bible. And yet the Bible is one, as its Author is one, and were it not, it could not be the word of that immutable Being, who wills not, like his capricious creatures, one thing at one time and another at another; nor could it be the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

To what is all this owing? Simply that they take partial views of Scripture, not minding that "half the truth is often the greatest falsehood that can be told," and so teach men a garbled faith, declaring indeed the counsel of God, but shunning

1 Lord Halifax.