ssons requisite for our salvation are not to be found in any one
scripture or in any one sermon, but that all that is required by any
pilgrim or any company of pilgrims should all be found in every
minister's ministry as he leads his flock on from one Sabbath-day to
another, rightly dividing the word of truth. Our ministers should have
something in their successive sermons for everybody. Something for the
children, something for the slow-witted and the dull of understanding,
and something specially suited for those who are of a quick apprehension;
something at one time to make the people smile, at another time to make
them blush, and at another time to make the water stand in their eyes.

3. And, then, the Interpreter's life was as full of work as his house
was of entertainment and instruction. Not only so, but his life, it was
well known, had been quite as full of work before he had a house to work
for as ever it had been since. The Interpreter did nothing else but
continually preside over his house and all that was in it and around it,
and it was all gone over and seen to with his own eyes and hands every
day. He had been present at the laying of every stone and beam of that
solid and spacious house of his. There was not a pin nor a loop of its
furniture, there was not a picture on its walls, nor a bird nor a beast
in its woods and gardens, that he did not know all about and could not
hold discourse about. And then, after he had taken you all over his
house, with its significant rooms and woods and gardens, he was full all
supper-time of all wise saws and witty proverbs. 'One leak will sink a
ship,' he said that night, 'and one sin will destroy a sinner.' And all
their days the pilgrims remembered that word from the Interpreter's lips,
and they often said it to themselves as they thought of their own
besetting sin. Now, if it is indeed so, that every gospel minister is an
interpreter, and every evangelical church an interpreter's house, what an
important passage this is for all those who are proposing and preparing
to be ministers. Let them reflect upon it: what a house this is that the
Interpreter dwells in; how early and how long ago he began to lay out his
grounds and to build his house upon them; how complete in all its parts
it is, and how he still watches and labours to have it more complete.
Understandest thou what thou here readest? it is asked of all ministers,
young and old, as they turn over John