font may remain in all its integrity, and sacraments be celebrated with all the circumstances that may be thought needful to ensure their efficiency, and daily prayers may be frequented with a zeal and punctuality worthy of the most rigid devotee, but in stifling the oral proclamation of Divine truth you will have suppressed that still small voice of God whereby in the ordinary dealings of grace souls are converted, backsliders reclaimed, the ignorant enlightened, and sinners saved. Experience is on the side of this testimony; Whensoever preaching has decayed, whenever it has either come to be altogether neglected, or whenever it has degenerated into a cold and lifeless form, then piety has decayed also; spiritual indifference has settled upon the church or community: whereas, on the contrary, with the revival of this ordinance there has always been a marked revival of spiritual fervour. In the dark ages which preceded the Reformation there was no

value whatsoever put upon preaching. It was the fervid preaching of the immortal Luther and Melancthon which shook the despotism of the Papacy, and kindled in men's minds that thirst for truth which resulted in the emancipation of tens of thousands from the falsehood and the tyranny of the Papal Antichrist. It was the preaching of Latimer and Ridley, and the glorious band of our martyred Reformers, which scattered the spiritual darkness that had long brooded over England, and became the instrument in the hands of God for our introduction into the glorious liberty wherewith the Gospel of Christ makes free. There have been subsequent periods in the history of our Church at which there has been a deof vital religion, and a growing ignorance of Divine truth such periods have always been marked by the absence of fervour on the part of preachers, and of value amongst the people for this divine ordinance; and when such periods have given place to seasons of

cay

:

revival, preaching may invariably be shown to have been the grand instrumentality employed. Depend upon it, that whatever the system be which undervalues the ordinance of preaching, in so far as it does this, it is hostile to the cause of real piety and the growth of true spirituality. The doctrine which unduly exalts the sacraments and other means of grace, and depreciates the value of the oral proclamation of Divine truth, such doctrine is adverse to the advancement of godliness; it is opposed to the concurrent testimony of Scripture and experience as to the method which, under God, is the most powerfully adapted to produce and to sustain the spiritual life of a church, whether in its collective or individual capacity.

Having said thus much with respect to the ordinance of preaching-as an important mean of grace-I would condense into the remainder of this discourse some practical observations with respect to the design of

preaching, upon the one hand, and the responsibility which it entails upon the

other.

The design of all faithful preaching is the glory of God in the salvation of souls; The preacher has to deal with immortal spirits; with souls naturally sunk in guilt and exposed to eternal condemnation; yet souls which have been ransomed with a Redeemer's blood, and which are capable of everlasting glory: he has one remedy, and one alone to propose, as fully commensurate with the necessities of the case: he has one theme upon which to enlarge, and that theme is Christ; Christ in all the dignity of His divine, and in all the humiliation of His human, nature; Christ as occupying from all eternity a throne of glory; Christ as bound in the sinner's stead to a cross of shame; Christ as obedient unto death; Christ as rising triumphantly from the grave; Christ as having exhibited a perfect pattern for His people to follow; Christ as

interceding in heaven; Christ as the promised Saviour, for whose second coming in glory the Church waits in eager hope and in firm expectation.

To warn, to exhort, to rebuke, to persuade, to instruct men out of God's word, so that by hope or fear they may be moved to lay hold of eternal life, that so they may be saved for ever, this is the great purpose of the Gospel ministry. In the exercise of this ministry, its just proportion must be given to every part of Christian doctrine. If any man prophesy, saith the Apostle, "let him prophesy according to the proportion of faith;" the doctrine of human depravity, of man's utter helplessness in himself to accomplish any part of his moral deliverance; of the atonement which Jesus effected through dying upon the cross; of justification the result of His meritorious obedience; of sanctification, the fruit of the divine operation of the Holy Ghost; of faith, as

1 Rom. xii. 6.