ON THE RELATION OF THE SERMON TO THE WORD OF GOD. It must often have occurred to us to have listened to sermons which bore little or no relation to the texts upon which they were professedly grounded. There are those who take texts with the view apparently of showing with what facility they can get rid of them; others who take them only to torture them, to make them say what they have not said, and what they had no intention of saying. The two practices, of taking a text and then forsaking it, and of taking a text and then perverting it, appear to be very grave faults in the ministry of the Word.

There are indeed those, some of whom are not without authority in the Church of God (Vinet, e.g.), who do not consider the employment of a text essential to a discourse from the pulpit.

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And speaking absolutely, it is not so. What makes a sermon Christian is not so much the employment of a text as the spirit of the preacher. A sermon may be Christian, edifying, instructive, without confining itself within the limits of a passage of Holy Scripture. It may be quite Scriptural without having a text, just as with a text it may be by no means Scriptural. passage of Scripture has often served as a passport to ideas which were not Scriptural; and preachers seem sometimes to place at the head of their compositions very strong biblical texts in order to show their ingenuity in enervating them. But the text is not a pretext. We are not at liberty thus formally to immolate the Divine Word. When the text is thus only as a false ensign, when the belfry surmounts the gaming house, it would doubtless be much better to remove the ensign and pull down the belfry. (Vinet.) Whilst allowing, however, that a Christian discourse may be delivered without the employment

of a text, as e.g., by our Bishops in their Confirmation (though even then I for one have often felt that a text would give a precision, a variety, and a force to Episcopal addresses which are often sadly wanting), and by ourselves at our social and clerical gatherings; yet, as a rule, we shall probably all agree that the method commonly adopted rests upon solid and good founda

tions.

1. The consecration which it has received from time and from universal consent has given it force with those who love the old paths where the old paths are good ones, and who meddle not with them that are given to needless change. Prov. xxiv. 21.

2. This method well represents the idea that the preacher is the minister of the Word of God. It recalls that idea to himself and to others.

3. It has some very real advantages.

a. The first is the moral advantage to the preacher, from his having to found his discourse upon, and connect it with, the Word of God.

b. The second is the serious impression made upon an auditory, at the commencement of a discourse, by the enunciation of the sacred Word.

c. The third is that, in general, a text well opened out and closely followed will produce a discourse more special, more striking, more lively, and more likely to fasten itself upon the heart and conscience, than a discourse based upon an abstract conception it is a ready-made originality.

4. But there is another consideration in favour of preaching from a text, which brings us to the heart of our subject, that based upon the function of the preacher, viz., that he "preach the Word."

The Christian teacher corresponds in many points to the Old Testament prophet. We attach almost an exclusive importance to the predictive element in the prophetic gift. But this does not agree with Scripture. The Hebrew word Nubi probably signifies in its root to boil or bubble over; and represents either one who bursts forth, like a fountain, with spiritual utterances under a Divine influence ("My heart is bubbling up of a good matter," Psa. xlv. 1), or simply one who pours forth words. This word is translated by the LXX. роprηs, which, through their adoption of it, has passed into all European languages. In classical usage the prophet is always the interpreter or medium of the Divine will. Thus Apollo is the prophet of Jupiter; the Pythia, the prophetess of Apollo: he is one who speaks for or as the mouthpiece of another; not the foreteller, but the forth-teller (Aaron shall be thy prophet, "instead of a mouth" to thee, Exod. iv. 16; vii. 1); the expounder and inter

preter of the Divine mind. In the same way the Christian minister, so far as it is his function to teach, is an expositor of the Divine will. There was clearly a division of labour in the primitive Church; we do not find that all ministers did the same thing, nor that all did all things (Ephes. iv. 11; 1 Cor. xii. 28-30). There were Deacons appointed to serve tables; there were Presbyters who did not teach at all (1 Tim. v. 17); but with us the ministry, so far as it is a preaching ministry, is a ministry of the Word. Christianity is a word, a thought of God, destined to become the thought of man. But thought and word are closely related; thought is an interior word, word is an expressed thought. Thus the Christian ministry is a ministry of the Word.

Again, the Christian minister is a pastor (Eph. iv. 11). What is a pastor? He is one who feeds; he nourishes souls with a word which is not his own (just as the shepherd nourishes his sheep with grass which he has not made to grow); he reproduces the Divine Word, and applies it to the varying needs of the flock, as the word of instruction, of reproof, of exhortation, of encouragement, of consolation.

The Word, then, is his instrument.

He is to "preach the Word" (2 Tim. iv. 2).

"Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God" (Heb. xiii. 7).

"When ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the Word of God" (1 Thess. ii. 33).

"If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Pet. iv. 11); i. e., if any man speak as a prophet or teacher, let him speak (os λóyia eoû) as oracles of God-as God's sayings, not his own-as a steward—non liberalis de proprio sed de alieno.

The minister of Christ is a "steward of the mysteries of God" (1 Cor. iv. 1); the dispenser of those treasures of grace now no longer hidden, but manifested in Christ" (Rom. xvi. 25).

These passages show plainly that the minister of the Gospel is not, like the foolish prophets of old, to prophesy out of his own heart" (Ezekiel xiii. 2); but to forthtell, to interpret, to declare the Divine Word. He is not the originator, but the agent; not the master, but the steward. "He that hath my Word, saith God, let him speak my Word faithfully" (Jer. xxiii. 28). "As the Lord liveth, said Micaiah, what the Lord saith unto me that will I speak" (1 Kings xxii. 14).

Enough has been said to show what a very close relation ought to exist between the sermon and the Word of God.

I proceed to develope certain rules or principles which flow from that relationship.

I. THE TEXT SHOULD BE DRAWN FROM THE WORD of God. This may sound like a needless truism, but it is not altogether so.

I do not say that the text should be taken from the Bible, but from the Word of God.

Thus (1) Our text should not be taken from a passage which criticism rejects, or upon which it has thrown serious doubt; e. g., 1 John v. 7, 1 Cor. vi. 20.

A text may be very beautiful, very evangelical; but if it is evidently interpolated, or strongly suspected, it should not be made use of as the Word of God.

(2) Our text should not be taken from a defective translation. E. g., Job xix. 25-27-"I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c.

Isa. lix. 19—" When the enemy shall come in like a flood,” &c. "When He shall come as a river straitened in his course, which a mighty wind driveth along" (Lowth); meaning that Jehovah will come to take vengeance with all the violence of a river in flood.

Hag. ii. 7-"The desire (fem.) of all nations shall come;" rather, "The things desired of all nations, either the blessings of the New Covenant, or the silver and the gold."

Acts xxvi. 28-"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." èv ỏλíyw μe meets. "Thus lightly, easily art thou thinking to persuade me," &c.

To adopt a defective translation is to elevate translators to the place of inspired men. The text should be taken from the original, and we must abide as closely as we can by the meaning of the original. That we cannot always do this with perfect accuracy, is no excuse for our adoption of an evident departure from that original meaning.

(3) May we take as a text a saying of man contained in the Word of God? Surely yes, where such saying is presented as a fact. This fact is often of great importance, and worthy of being carefully examined. God has thought proper to preserve it in the book of His oracles. E. g., "Who can forgive sins but God only?" "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief," &c. These things have been written for our ad

monition.

Having drawn our text, therefore, from the Word of God, let it be our endeavour

II. TO DRAW OUT THE SENSE WHICH IT HAD IN THE MIND OF THE AUTHOR; or perhaps, more strictly, in the mind of Him who inspired it. And in order to arrive at a perfect understanding of the sense of a passage, we must examine both the text and the context.

Then we must ascertain as clearly as possible the literal and

grammatical meaning of the words. "There are few things,' says Archbishop Trench, "which we should have more at heart than to awaken in our scholars an enthusiasm for the grammar and the lexicon;" to which I would add the Concordance (Hebrew and Greek). Our first object should be, not to make Scripture mean what we think or what we wish, but to learn what it really says to us; and in order to do this, we must ascertain what is the ordinary lexical meaning of the individual words; and next, what, according to the ordinary rules of syntax, is the simple meaning of the text which they make up.

Further, we must, in every passage, elicit the full significance of all details; we must illustrate, wherever possible, by reference to history, topography, and antiquities; and, as far as we can, we must let Scripture interpret itself.

But we must not only study the text, we must study the context; and we must develope and enunciate the meaning of the text under the limitations assigned by the context.

There is, first, a general context—a place to which all texts belong, which is the Bible as a whole. The particular text must be compared with the general doctrine of Scripture; in other words, the preacher must interpret according to the analogy of faith.

But besides the general context, there is the particular context; sometimes the book as a whole, always the passage, the argument, discourse, exhortation in which the text occurs. This must be studied, or we may give to a text a sense contrary to the intention of the writer; and the finest sense must be rejected when the context repels it. Nor shall we thus simply avoid a false sense but we shall be more likely to seize upon the whole of the true one. The circumstances which surround a text often throw upon it a flood of light, and colour it with a sense which otherwise we might have failed to discover.

The only objection which can be brought against this process is the labour which it involves. It is so much easier to take a few words, embodying some well-known truth, and affix to them a series of equally well-known truisms, than it is to sit down to the exhaustive examination of a long and perhaps difficult context, that we cannot wonder that men acknowledge the principle but neglect the practice. We ministers being behind the scenes, as it were, of pulpit preparation, can often detect in sermons the character of the preparation which they have received, and perceive how vast is the difference between the shallow exposition of a text, upon which no labour has been bestowed, and the rich and instructive exhibition of truth, which results when both text and context have been subjected to a vigorous examination, when both lexicon and concordance have