the childish abuse of spiritual liberty, 'the cloke of maliciousness,' 'the stumbling-block.'

'Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.' That is Christianity.

Eleventh Discourse.

ON PREACHING.

DELIVERED NOVEMBER 3, 1871.

OU sometimes hear people complain of sermons because they are too doctrinal; they tell you that they do not want to hear

about doctrine, they want to hear about practice. And then they go and hear a practical sermon, and they complain that the sermon was all morality, and they do not want to hear so much about practice as about doctrine; if you would only give them sound doctrine, they would find the practice out for themselves.

It is difficult to know what to do with people who are satisfied with neither doctrinal nor practical preaching; at the same time, no doubt, there is a great deal of truth in what they mean, if there is not much sense in what they say. You have got no right to preach doctrine to people, unless you can show that doctrine is in some way or other connected with the conduct of life. That is really what people mean when

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they object to doctrine, and you have no right, as a Christian minister, believing in the spirit of Christianity as a great motive power of love-you have no right to tell people simply about right and wrong, without seeking to inspire them with the enthusiasm which comes only from the appropriation of deep spiritual principles; and that is what people mean when they say they do not like merely practical sermons.

One day a friend said to me, 'Have you ever been to hear Mr. Melville?' I said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'He is a very evangelical preacher.' I said, 'Yes, very.' 'A very eloquent man.' 'Yes, very.' And then he said, 'You know, you never hear a sermon of Mr. Melville's without hearing right good sound Christian doctrine along with the eloquence; you hear,' continued my friend, a great deal about Jesus Christ and the atonement, and eternal punishment, and such-like wholesome and comforting truths; in short, in every sermon he preaches the cardinal doctrines of Christianity.' 'Well then,' I said, 'Mr. Melville certainly must be very sound;' and then I took down a volume and showed my friend a sermon of Mr. Melville's in which the name of Christ or

Jesus did not once occur. It was a good long sermon, and very eloquent, but there was nothing in it about the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, or eternal damnation either. My friend was very much shocked, and did not think half so much of Mr. Melville after that. I know I have sometimes shocked people by pointing out to them that the word 'God' did not once occur in the Book of Esther, and although they did not like to say so they did

not think much of the Book of Esther after that. It is the letter which killeth, and the Spirit which giveth life.

105. We shall never be reasonable about preaching until we have got some notion of what preaching ought to be; and we shall never get a correct notion of that until we have made up our minds what the clergyman really is, and what ought to be expected from him as a religious teacher. I wish we all held reasonable views of the Christian ministry. I wish we understood its noble mission. I wish we apprehended it in its height, and depth, and breadth, and length. Above all, I wish we could know the full meaning of those words of St. Paul, when he tells us that, in his ministerial capacity, he does not want to have dominion over our faith,' he does not want to be a pope, or to impose his scheme of theology upon us; he wants to give us a good practical scheme of theology, and will do it if he can; but he wants above all to commend himself, in his teaching, to men's consciences in the sight of God, that so he may be 'a helper of their joy:' as a minister of Christ, as your servant for Christ's sake, he longs to help you on, to enlighten your mind, to rouse your courage, to give you sound, earnest grounds of action, which we are in the habit of calling Christian action, because the heat and power of it flows from Christ to the heart of man. So, my brethren, the Christian minister is nothing if he is not 'a helper of your joy; for by faith ye stand.'

Now laymen are often sufficiently jealous of the clergy. And this jealousy is in proportion to the

influence of the clergy. They do not see, they say, why men, who know no more than themselves, should be set over them to have dominion over their faith.' Now there would be no jealousy at all, no sense that the clergyman was meddling with what did not concern him, if the sphere of his ministry was first rightly understood and defined by himself, or by others.

106. There are two views of the clergy. One view supposes that the clergyman is one entrusted with miraculous powers and set over the people to lay down the law in a kind of dogmatic manner, and to have dominion over their faith, and to be the keeper of certain sacraments of enormous weight and moral consequence to their souls, which he can at his will impart or withhold. That is one view of the clerical office; and that is a most disastrous one, because it makes the clergy into a caste and cuts them off from their fellow-men. I can well understand reasonable people being very jealous of a set of men who are bound together by sacramental privileges, and who will insensibly, but inevitably, work for the authority of their class to maintain their special powers and prerogatives as against the laity. If you tell a man that he is one of a special class, that is to say, that his interests are separate from, if not opposed to, the interests of the mass of men amongst whom he ministers, if you teach him that he is entrusted with great spiritual powers which do not belong to them; why, in the end, he will believe it, and will justify all that you have to say against the meddlesome influence