at a time when the
questions about the Bible are the most numerous and the most difficult
in theology, and many accepted opinions are cast into solution. I dare
say it is the experience of most students of divinity that they are
more perplexed about inspiration and related questions than about any
other subjects. On the other hand, the attention directed to the Bible
was never so great as it is at present; and the methods of studying it
are daily improving. And, in spite of all the difficulties, it is
questionable if there ever was in the Church an intenser conviction
that the voice of God is heard in His Word. The experience of the
ministry deepens this conviction every year. If I may give utterance
to my own experience, I have never come to the end of a close study of
a book of Scripture in the congregation without having both a fresh
respect for its literary character and a profounder impression of its
Divine wisdom. The more the Bible is searched, the more will it be
loved; and the stronger will the conviction grow that its deep truths
are the Divine answers to the deep wants of human nature.

Yet to deliver the message of God is not merely to read what prophets
and apostles penned and to repeat it by rote. The man who is to be
God's messenger must himself draw near to God and abide in His
secret, as they did. The word must detach itself from the book and
become a living element of experience before it can profit even the
reader himself; and much more is this the case, of course, before it
can profit others.[28] It is the truth which has become a personal
conviction, and is burning in a man's heart so that he cannot be
silent, which is his message. The number of such truths which a man
has appropriated from the Bible and verified in his own experience is
the measure of his power.[29] There is all the difference in the world
between the man who thus speaks what he knows from an inner impulse
and the man whose sermon is simply a literary exercise on a Scripture
theme, and who speaks only because Sunday has come round and the bell
rung and he must do his duty.

The selection of the theme for preaching is to be determined chiefly
by the power of the Word to lay hold of the conviction of the
preacher. Or, if the subject is prescribed, as when one is lecturing
through a book of the Bible, the points to be treated are to be
determined in this way. Sometimes, as a preacher reads the Word, a
text will leap from the page, s