eighth chapter of Nehemiah: "And Ezra, the priest, brought the Law before the congregation, both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, npon the first day of the seventh month, and he read therein, before the street that was before the water gate, from morning until midday, before the men and women and those that could understand, and the ears of the people were attentive unto the Book of the Law." No preaching there, he merely read the Word of God—that is, God's Word-not man's. A great many of us prefer man's word to that of God. We are running after eloquent preachers after men who can get up eloquent moral essays. They leave out the Word of God. We want to get back to the Word of God. They had an all-day meeting there, something like this, "And Ezra opened the Book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up." I can see the great crowd standing up to listen to the prophet, just like young robins taking in what the old robin brings them. "And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen. With lifting up their hands they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground." "So they read in the Book in the Law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." Now, it strikes me that it is about the height of preaching to get people to understand the reading of the Word. It would be a great deal better if a preacher would sometimes stop when he had made a remark, and say, "Mr. Jones, do you understand that?" "No, I don't;" and then the preacher might make it a little plainer, so that he could understand it. There would be a great difference in the preaching in some of the churches. He would talk a little less about metaphysics and science, and speak about something else. "Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy unto our Lord, neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." "For the joy of the Lord is your strength." If you will show me a Bible Christian living on the Word of God, I will show you a joyful man. He is mounting up all the time. He has got new truths that lift him up over every obstacle, and he mounts over difficulties higher and higher, like a man I once heard of who had a bag of gas fastened on either side, and if he just touched the ground with his foot, over a wall or a hedge he would go; and so these truths make us so light that we bound over every obstacle.

And when we have those truths our work will be successful. Just turn over to Jeremiah 20: 9, to this blessed old prophet. There was a time when he was not going to speak about the Word of Ged any more. Now I just want to show you this, when a man is filled with the Word of God you can not keep him still. If a man has got the

Word, he must speak or die. "Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, but his Word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." It set him on fire, and so a man filled with the Word of God is filled as with a burning fire, and it is so easy for a man to work when he is filled with the word of God, I heard of a man the other week who was going to preach against the blood. I was very anxious to see what he would say about it, and I got the paper next morning and found there was nothing else there than scriptural quotations. I said that was the very best thing he could do. As we see in the 23d chapter of Jeremiah: "Is not my Word like as a fire, saith the Lord, that breaketh the rock in pieces?" Those hard, flinty rocks will be broken if we give them the Word of God. These men in the Northwest that we can not reach by our own words, give them this and see if they can not be reached. Not only that, if we are full of Scripture ourselves, give them what God says, you will fine it easy to preach-you will say we haven't to get up so many sermons. It seems to me if we had more of the Word of God in our services and give up more of our own thoughts, there would be a hundred times more converted than there are. A preacher, if he wants to give his people the Word, must have fed on the Word himself. A man must get water out of a well when there is water. He may dip his bucket in if it is empty, but he will get nothing. I think the best thing I have heard in Chicago, I heard the other day, and it has fastened itself on my mind, and I must tell it to you ministers. We had for our subject at Farwell Hall the other day, the 17th chapter of John, when the Rev. Mr. Gibson said if a man were to come among a lot of thirsty men with an empty bucket they wouldn't come to him to drink. He said he believed that was the trouble with most of the ministers, as that had been the trouble with himself. He hadn't got a bucket of living water, and the people wouldn't come to him. Just look at an audience of thirsty men, and you bring in a bucket of clear, sparkling

water and see how they will go for it. If you go into your Sunday

schools and the children look into your buckets and see them empty, there is nothing for them there. So, my friends, if we attempt to feed others we must first be fed ourselves.

That

There is another thing which has wonderfully helped me. is, to mark my Bible whenever I hear anything that strikes me. If a minister has been preaching to me a good sermon, I put his name down next to the text, and then it recalls what has been said, and I can show it to others. You know we laymen have the right to take what we hear to one another. If ministers saw people doing this they would preach a good deal better sermons. Not only that, but if we understand the Bibles better the ministers would preach better. I think if people knew more about the Word than they do,

so many of them would not be carried away with false doctrine. There is no place I have ever been in where people so thoroughly understand their Bibles as in Scotland. Why, little boys could quote Scripture and take me up on a text. They have the whole nation just educated, as it were, with the Word of God. Infidelity cannot come there. A man got up, in Glasgow, at a corner, and began to preach universal salvation. "Oh, sir," said an old woman, "that will never save the like of me." She had heard enough preaching to know that it would never save her. If a man comes among them with any false doctrine, these Scotchmen instantly draw their Bibles on him. I had to keep my eyes open, and be careful what I said there. They knew their Bibles a good deal better than I did. And so if the preachers could get the people to read the Word of God more carefully, and note what they heard, there would not be so much infidelity among us.

I want to tell you how I was blessed a few years ago, upon hearing a discourse upon the 30th chapter of Proverbs. The speaker said the children of God were like four things. The first thing was, "The ants are a people not strong," and he went on to compare the chidren of God to the ants. He said the people of God were like ants. They pay no attention to the things of the present, but go on steadily preparing for the future. The next thing he compared them to was the conies. "The conies are but a feeble folk." It is a very weak little thing. "Well," said I, "I wouldn't like to be a coney." But he went on to say that it built upon a rock. The children of God were very weak, but they laid their foundation upon a rock. "Well," said I, "I will be like a coney and build my hopes upon a rock." Like the Irishman who said he trembled himself, but the rock upon which his house was built never did. The next thing the speaker compared them to was a locust. I didn't think much of locusts, and I thought I wouldn't care about being like one. But he went on to read they have "no king, yet they go forth, all of them, by bands." There were the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, the Methodist bands going forth without a king, but, by and by, our King will come back again, and these bands will fly to them. "Well, I will be like a locust; my King's away," I thought. The next comparison was a spider. I don't like this at all; but he said if we went into a gilded palace filled with luxury, we might see a spider holding on to something, oblivious to all the luxury below. It was laying hold on the things above. "Well," said I, “I would like to be a spider." I heard this a good many years ago, and I just put the speaker's name to it and it makes the sermon. But take your Bibles and mark them. Don't think of wearing it out. It is a rare thing to find a man wearing his Bible out nowadays-and Bibles are cheap too. You are living in a land where there are plenty. Study them and mark them, and don't be afraid of wearing them. Now don't

you see now much better it would be to study it? And it you are talking to a man, instead of talking about your neighbors, just talk about the Bible; and when Christian men come together, just compare notes, and ask one another: "What have you found new in the Word of God since I saw you last?" Some men come to me and ask me if I have picked up anything new, and I give them what I have and they give me what they have. An Englishman asked me some time ago, 66 Do you know much about Job?" "Well, I know a little," I replied. "If you've got the key of Job you've got the key to the whole Bible." "What," I replied, "I thought it was a poetical book." "Well," says he, "I will just divide Job into seven heads. The first is the perfect man-untried-and that is Adam and Eve before they fell. The second head is tried by adversity-Adam after the fall. The third is the wisdom of the world-the three friends who came to try to help Job out of his difficulties. They had no power to help him at all." He could stand his scolding wife, but he couldn't stand them. The fourth head takes the form of the Mediator, and in the fifth head God speaks at last. He heard him before by the ear, but he hears him now by the soul, and he fell down flat upon his face. A good many men in Chicago are like Job. They think they are mighty good men, but the moment they hear the voice of God they know they are sinners-they are in the dust. There isn't much talk about their goodness then. Here he was with his face down. Job learned his lesson. That was the sixth head, and in these heads were the burdens of Adam's sin. The seventh head was when God showed him his face. Well, I learned the key to the Bible; I can not tell how this helped me. I told it to another man, and he asked me if I ever thought of how he got his property back and his sheep back. He gave Job double what he had, and gave him ten children besides, so that he should have ten in heaven

besides his ten on earth.

THE POWER OF PRAYER.

"Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be male known unto God." PHILIPPIANS 4: 6.

I will read a few verses in the fourth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, commencing at the fourth verse:

"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

I want to call your attention to the 6th and 7th verses: "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Now it may be that some wonder why it is that so many of these requests for prayer are coming in here daily-these written requests. And perhaps many wonder if there is any good in them. Now it seems to me to be perfectly Scriptural: "Let your requests be make known unto God." Pray for one another. We are told to pray for the household of faith. I pity the child of God who has got into that position that he does not want the prayers of God's people. These prayers bring a light among sorrowing Christians. I think if you should go through the city of Boston, you would find hardly a family but is passing through some great sorrow; some one of its number has been taken captive by sin; and I do not know what should touch our hearts more than these requests for prayer, abbreviated though they are. They come from hearts that are burdened, some that are crushed. I remember a man talking against these requests, wanting to know what good they did; and I was thinking of a prominent man in one of our cities. He had a boy in the army, an only son, he loved him better than life. But he was a conservative man, and when he came into the meeting and presented that boy for prayer, the people were amazed to think that a man of his high position should get up and present his boy for prayer. But God burdened his heart that morning to pray for his boy, as he never prayed be