the sacred phrases, as it were, into modern shapes, and then
at the close to enforce some main message of the portion. The method is
as old as the Homilies of Chrysostom, and older.

INTEREST OF PRACTICALITY.

Another secret of interest, permanent and effectual, is _practicality_
in preaching. I protest, whenever I can, and I hope to do so to the
last, against the common but unhappy fallacy of an outcry against
doctrine: "_Give us not a creed, but a life_." The whole New Testament,
the whole Bible, protests against such a sentence. There, a divine creed
is always seen as necessary for a divine life. Supernatural facts,
livingly apprehended, are necessary for supernatural peace and power in
this formidable natural world. But then, on the other side, it is a
fallacy almost as fatal to preach the supernatural fact and truth
without a constant and practical application of them to the crude and
stern realities of life. A young pastoral preacher was once, in my
hearing, warmly and lovingly thanked for his pulpit-work, on the eve of
his quitting his Curacy; and the point on which his humble friends dwelt
was that he had always preached Christ, _and_ always showed them how to
make use of His presence and power in the actual circumstances of their
lives. Eloquent words, aye and true words, spoken _in vacuo_, will be
dull to most hearers; eternal truths laid alongside the weekday work and
temptation will always be interesting.

"PREACH THE GOSPEL FULLY."

iv. "Preach the Gospel _fully_." Here is our great Nonconformist's last
adverb, in his recipe for attractive preaching. Its point is not so
obvious perhaps as that of the other words, but it is nobly true. "The
Gospel" is, as I have said, and as we know, nothing less than Jesus
Christ the Lord, in His whole harmonious glory of Person, Work, and
Word. It is deeply true that in that mighty and manifold theme there are
points which must be always prominent and ruling; and most surely the
man-humbling and soul-blessing truths of the Atoning Sacrifice are such
points. "First of all" (we have recalled that all-significant sentence
already), "first of all, Christ died for our sins." [1 Cor. xv. 3.] Alas
for the Church, for the congregation, for the pulpit, where that is
forgotten, obscured, or put into a secondary, or perhaps a tertiary
place! One thing is certain; that pulpit cannot be bearing its right
witness meanwhile to the "exceeding sinfulness" of sin--not merely the
deform