PREFACE. THE first of these Sermons will be found to contain a sufficient explanation of the circumstances which led to their delivery. In consenting to publish them,' I yield to the desire of those who had the best right to express a wish on the subject. I would that this little Volume might be regarded as a token of the gratitude which I shall always feel for the kindness of a Congregation to which it has been a privilege to be permitted even temporarily to minister. Expository Sermons labour under many disadvantages both in the hearing and still more 1 The whole course consisted of thirty Sermons, eighteen of which have been selected for publication. in the reading. It is difficult to make them lucid it is still more difficult to make them : attractive. But are they not needed? Do they not lay the most solid basis of Christian instruction ? Do they not contain the best antidote to error? Are we not then most sure that we are rightly proportioning the Word of truth, when we take it as it stands in the pages of Revelation, and seek only to illustrate, to enforce, and to apply it? In so doing, we shall find it necessary to vary in many cases the language of the Authorized Version. Sometimes for the sake of precision, sometimes for the sake of clearness, sometimes for the very purpose of arresting the attention by a change of terms, by a departure from the too familiar form even where it is impossible to improve it, the expositor of Scripture must claim and exercise the right of immediate access to the original, and bear the responsibility, always a grave one, of declaring to his Congregation that the sense of God's Word is, to the best of his |