the voices which swell the present clamour. Unspiritual professors who feel as warmly for an Elzevir Virgil-critics who glide through it as they glide through Shakespeare, and who deem the inspiration of the one quite equal to the inspiration of the other-sceptics who doubt the possibility of a Book-revelation, but whose doubts would be resolved were that revelation other than it is; weak men who would be thought important, and bold men who would be reckless with impunity,--What have all these to do with it? Who made them rulers and judges on a matter which involves the dearest interests of millions? This is a question too vital to be settled by dark pundits in cloisters, or by solemn triflers in magazines, or by dilettanti members of Parliament. Put it to the people -let the masses of pious men give a voice: those to whom the "word is spirit and life,"--who have been quickened into energy by its transforming power--who thank God for it as for daily bread--who strengthen in the true soul-growth by its nourishment--who exhibit its pure precepts in their lives-to whom it is the great charter at once of their present freedom and of their future hope-ask them if they are tired of the old Bible: poll the sacramental host of God's elect upon the matter, and you will find few of them who will hesitate to brand the fancied improvement, if not as an actual sacrilege, at least as an unwarrantable interference with the sacredness of a spiritual home. Put the case to yourselves. Fancy an officious stranger entering into your dwelling, suggesting alterations in the interior arrangements, depreciating the furniture, and anxious about remodelling the whole. "That bed is coarse and hard. It must have been in use a century. Modern skill will cast one in a shapelier mould." "Ah, I have pillowed on it thro' many a fevered dream, and it is hallowed to me because from it the angels carried my first-born to a Sabbatic rest in heaven.”

"That chair is clumsy and antiquated, and out of date. Send it out of sight." Oh

"Touch it not-a mother sat there,

And a sacred thing is that old arm chair."

Rude and insolent! What does he know of the sensibilities on which he tramples, of the clustering thoughts and memories-the spells of sweetest wizardry, which give to each and every object its sanctity and charm? Steps are on the stair, but they are not for common ears, and familiar faces are present to the household more than are counted by the stranger. The strongest affection in the national heart is this fond love of home, and it is this which has secured the integrity of the rustic roof-tree, no less than of temple-fane and palace-hall. It may be a mean and homely dwellingthere may be a clumsy stile at the garden-gate; the thatch may be black with the grime of years-there may be no festoon of jasmine over the trellised window; but it is sacred, for it is home.

"And if a caitiff false and vile,

Dares but to cross that garden-stile-
Dares but to fire that lowly thatch-
Dares but to force that peasant's latch-
The thunder-peal the deed will wake,
Will make his craven spirit quake;

And a voice from people, peer, and throne,
Will ring in his ears, Atone, Atone!"

If the Bible be the spiritual home of the believer-if it minister efficiently to the necessities of his entire man-if witnesses from opposing points have testified in its favourif from the Ultima Thule of scepticism Theodore Parker is eloquent in its praise-if from the torrid zone of Popery Father Newman declares that "it lives in the soul with a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego;

and all that there is about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible"-if it has come down to us hallowed with the memories of eld, and wet with the last tearful blessing of parents passed into the skies—if it has sustained our own spirits in extremest trouble-made our life work easy to us-beguiled the toil of this world, and inspired the hope of the world that is to come, what wonder that the jealous Christianity of the land, roused by the threatened desecration, should speak in tones of power, and should say to the mistaken men who would tamper with it, "Hands off there! proud intruders, let that Bible alone!"

And you, oh ye highly-privileged possessors and guardians of the truth! guard well your sacred trust--clasp it as your choicest treasure-lift it high in your temples--hide it deep hearts: it is "the word of the Lord, and that word endureth for ever."

in your

As a PREACHER OF THE TRUTH Bunyan had a high reputation in his day. Sympathy, earnestness, and power, were the great characteristics of his successful ministry. He preached what he felt, and his preaching therefore corresponded to the various stages of his personal experience. At first, himself in chains, he thundered out the terrors of the law, like another Baptist, against rich and poor together; then, happy in believing, he proclaimed salvation and the unparalleled blessedness of life by Christ, "as if an angel stood at his back to encourage him," and then with advancing knowledge, he disclosed the truth in its rounded harmony--“ the whole counsel of God." Instances of conversion were frequent under his ministry-many churches were founded by his labours. Dr. Owen assured King Charles that for the tinker's ability to prate, he would gladly barter his own stores of learning; and in his annual visit to London, twelve

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hundred people would gather at seven in the morning of a winter's working day, to hear him. Nor can we wonder that his ministry should have had "favour both with God and man," when we listen to his own statements of the feelings with which he regarded it. "In my preaching I have really been in pain, and have, as it were, travailed to bring forth children to God. If I were fruitless, it mattered not who commended me ; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who did condemn." "I have counted as if I had goodly buildings and lordships in those places where my children were born, my heart hath been so wrapped up in the glory of this excellent work, that I counted myself more blessed and honoured of God by this, than if He had made me the emperor of the Christian world, or the lord of all the glory of the earth without it." This is what we want now. We will not despair of the speedy conversion of the world if you give us an army of ministers who have-burned into their hearts-this passionate love for souls.

There are those, indeed, who tell us that the mission of the pulpit is fulfilled. They acknowledge that in the former ages-in the times of immaturity, when men spelt out the truth in syllables, it did a noble work. But the world has outgrown it, they tell us. It is an anachronism now. Men need neither its light nor its warning. The all-powerful press shall direct them-from the chair of criticism they shall learn wisdom-the educational institute shall aid them in heavenward progress they shall move upward and onward under the guidance of the common mind. But the divine institution of the ministry is not to be thus superseded. It has to do with eternity, and the matters of eternity are paramount. It has to deal with the most lasting emotions of the naturewith those deep instincts of eternal truths which underlie all systems, from which the man can never utterly divorce himself, and which God himself has graven on the soul. This

opposition to the pulpit, however the inefficiency of existing agencies may have contributed to it-however the memories of olden priestcraft may have given it strength, cannot be explained, but as originating in the yet unconquered enmity of the carnal mind to God. The teaching of the political theorizer, of the infidel demagogue, of the benevolent idealist -why are they so popular? The teaching of the religious instructor-why is it so repulsive to the world? The main secret will be found in the fact that the one exalt, the other reprove, the nature the one ignore, the other insist upon, the doctrine of the fall. If you silence the ministry, you silence the only living agency which, of set purpose, appeals to the moral sense of man, and brings out the world's conscience in its answer to moral obligation, and to the truths of the Bible. The minister divides an empire over the other faculties. He may speak to the intellect, but the philosopher will rival him. He may charm the imagination, but the poet is his master. He may rouse the passions, the mob-orator will do it better; but in his power over conscience he has a government which no man shares, and, as a czar of many lands, he wields the sceptre over the master-faculty of man. It is absolutely necessary, in this age of manifold activities and of spiritual pride, that there should be this ever-speaking witness of man's feebleness and God's strength. That witness dares not be silent amid the strife of tongues; and however the clamour may tell-and it does tell and it ought to tell, upon the time-serving and the indolent, upon the vapid and the insincere-it is an unanswerable argument for the mission of the ministry itself; just as the blast which scatters the acorns, roots the oak more firmly in the soil. Standing as I do to-night, in connection with an association which I dearly love, and which has been so highly honoured as an instrument of good, I must yet claim for the pulpit the