HERALDS OF GOD
to be suspicious of that sermon! Do not be like the preachers Spurgeon describes, who, having announced their text, "touch their hats, as it were, to that part of Scripture, and pass on to fresh woods and pastures new." Open up the riches that the particular text contains. Remember there is something there which occurs nowhere else. Bring to light its buried treasure. Why should we so often find ourselves racking our brains and cudgelling our souls, and producing in the end only some poor disquisition lamentably devoid of any qualities of vivid interest or grip or appeal? It is because we will persist in driving along the path of our own thoughts and preconceptions instead of following where the Bible leads. Give the strength of your ministry to expository preaching, and not only will you always have a hearing, not only will you keep your message fresh and varied, but, in the truest sense, you will be doing the work of an evangelist; and from many of those quiet words of grateful acknowledgment which are amongst the most precious and sacred rewards of any man's ministry, you will know that through the Scriptures God has spoken again, as He spoke to the fathers by the prophets.
The second plea is for a due observance of the Christian Year. Your own personal devotional life stands to gain much, in discipline, vividness and vitality, by active celebration of the great Christian festivals. Moreover, such observance has no small ecumenical value: it is one way of asserting, through all differences and divisions, our essential unity in
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