purpose; or an interleaved copy may be used. The meaning of rare words may also profitably be "cribbed" in, not from the next best translation, but from the result of our own study. In this way we should go through the chapter.

Then we may well turn back and read the chapter over at a sitting, with an eye to the literary character of the composition; the exquisite art of the opening parable, the climactic impression of the sixfold" Woe," the wonderfully vivid picture of the swift resistless oncoming of the Assyrian host. The historical and theological aspects of the prophecy next demand our attention; the light it throws on the moral and religious state of the times; the prophet's teaching of the character and will of God, of his hatred of Judah's sin, of the judgment and its instruments. What is learned thus should be compared with other utterances of Isaiah, and with the words of other prophets, especially those of his own century. For this purpose a reference Bible may be used; the best is, perhaps, the Variorum Bible,1 edited by Cheyne and Driver, which is useful also for the notes on various readings and interpretations. It will be time then to take up the commentaries, comparing them with our own results, and confirming, supplementing, or correcting the latter by them. Cases where the opinion of a good commentator differs from that which we had formed from our own study should be carefully reconsidered, but without undue deference to the "authority" of the book. There is no authority in exegesis but that of good reasons. Every student of the Bible, in however humble a way, should take pains to preserve and cultivate his own independence of judg ment; to make dictionaries and commentaries his advisers and helpers, not his masters. Many ministers, I fear, use commentaries in quite a different way, as a substitute for study rather than an aid in it. If they want to read a chapter, or to take the wise precaution of verifying a text in the Hebrew Bible, the commentary is their first and last resort. With what kind of a conscience an educated man can do that, I do not profess to understand; equally little how he can give out as his own the mere plunder of a raid on somebody else's learning. I do not, of course, mean to imply that there is no other proper use of a commentary than that which I have described above. On the contrary, it is a very good plan to read with a commentary books which we have not been able to work over for ourselves. But the knowledge 1 The Holy Bible, etc., with Various Renderings and Readings. Published by Eyre & Spottiswoode.

gained in this way, useful as it is, is to be regarded as provisional only.

When we have finished our study of the chapter it will be well to prefix to our notes on each subdivision a short descriptive title, or motto, in which its most distinctive truth or lesson is expressed, and to add to them such practical observations or suggestions for sermons as have occurred to us. The minister who studies a prophetic book in the way I have indicated will find it full of lessons for our own times, as well as of instruction and inspiration for the preacher. He will do wisely to note them down where they can be readily found, and where they will be recalled to him at each re-reading of the passage. But if he wants to preserve his own manliness and self-respect let him eschew homiletic outlines, sermon hints, and whatever else the second-hand ideas may be called which are marketed in preachers' magazines and a certain kind of commentaries. Besides, a man pays much too dear for ready-made sermonic material which he buys at the price of his own originality. It is not, therefore, as a quarry for sermons, or ideas for sermons, that I recommend the minister who is studying Isaiah to add to his exegetical commentaries G. A. Smith's volume on Isaiah in the Expositor's Bible,1 but as an instructive illustration of what a good critic and interpreter can make of the book in the pulpit. If our Protestant laymen are to know anything worth while about the Bible, it must be through a revival of expository preaching; and expository preaching that intelligent men will listen to must be the fruit of faithful and well-directed exegetical study. That this sort of preaching has fallen into general disfavor and disuse, is due chiefly to the fact that ministers were too much in the habit of taking to it when they had not had time to prepare a regular sermon, and either crammed or improvised their material. Well done, it will always be popular. The minister who has studied the Old Testament should preach on it. It will quicken his interest and increase his tact in practical interpretation.

But where, I think I hear some of my readers ask a little impatiently, is time for all this to come from? I should answer that the pastor's difficulty is not ordinarily that he has not time enough, but that he can no longer, as in his student days, command long uninterrupted stretches of time. All his habits of study must be reformed. Many never adjust themselves to these 1 G. A. Smith. The Book of Isaiah. Vol. I. Is. i.-xxxix. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1888.

new conditions, and think that because they cannot sit down for hours together at their books they have no time for study. We have to learn to use the broken bits of time, the intervals of our more exacting occupations. The course of study I have outlined above has been planned with special reference to this fact; that as little as possible may be lost by interruptions. That it can be carried out I know. In the first years of my own ministry I read a large part of the Old Testament in Hebrew on Sunday evenings, after the second service. For a while I devoted Monday morning to exegetical study; afterwards I set apart the first half hour every morning for this work, and found it an excellent preparation for sermonizing. Every one, of course, must fix upon the time which best suits his own circumstances and habits of work. If the time for these studies cannot be found in any other way, there are few who might not save it out of the hours they give to the newspapers, secular and religious, and the popular magazines. Indeed, most ministers would know the Bible very well if they devoted to it half the time they spend on reading as ephemeral as the grass of the field, "which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven." And, really, it is worth while.

George F. Moore.

THE PROBLEM OF THE MODERN CITY CHURCH.

No cast-iron rules can be laid down for church work. Success depends often as much upon not doing some things as upon doing other things. The successful minister must be an eclectic, with a large liberty of action, a large knowledge of his church and its environment, and an average stock of sanctified common sense. The traditions of the past, and the experiences of others, are useful to him only so far as he is able to modify and adjust them to the conditions of his own field. Churches differ as individuals differ. The problem which confronts the country church differs from that which confronts the city church, and among the city churches the conditions of success are by no means the same.

There is one question, however, in the solution of which all the churches are vitally interested. It is the burning question of the age: How shall the masses be reached and converted? The problem bristles with difficulties, and to those who stand face to face with the churchless multitudes it seems almost insoluble.

Every attempt to solve it in a practical way is watched with sympathetic interest by all earnest Christians.

Every community, divided according to its relations to this subject, falls into three classes: first, the regular church-goers, who can be depended upon to support the religious institutions of the community under all circumstances; secondly, the semi-occasional church-goers, who have some conscience concerning their religious obligations, whose hereditary instincts or early associations lead them to send their children to the Sunday-school and to attend themselves an occasional Sunday-school concert or service of worship; and, thirdly, the non-church-goers, who have absolutely no interest in religious matters, who are never seen in God's house, and who practically do not know that there is such a house in the town. The question of churching and evangelizing the masses relates, of course, to these last two classes: to those who have a slight hold on the church, and to those who are indifferent to or opposed to it. The first class are already within the doors of the sanctuary, and their needs give rise to problems quite different from those which concern the non-church-going community.

Now the query arises, Are we not basing our preaching and our methods of work too exclusively upon the needs of this first class? Are we not looking through their eyes, and hearing through their ears, and shaping our policy and administration more to suit their tastes and prejudices, than with a view of interesting and attracting these other two classes. Take the case of preaching, for instance. The regular church-goers have fixed, unconsciously perhaps, a certain standard for the proper sermon, which few preachers have the courage to depart from. This standard is usually determined by the tastes and whims of those who have a large influence in the congregation, and any violation of it is sure to arouse a kind of criticism which is exceedingly mortifying to a sensitive nature. Mr. A. is a man of large culture, and is proud of his attainments. He does not like the colloquial style of preaching, and shudders when his minister uses a provincialism, or a phrase which is adapted to catch the ear of the common people. Mr. B. has a horror of anything which savors of the drama. He does not want any acting in the pulpit. Mr. C., whose commercial morality does not quite square with the Decalogue, dislikes a minister who is continually harping on honesty in business, and other secular topics. He wants to hear the simple gospel. While Mr. D. refuses flatly to pay a dollar towards the salary of the man who drags politics or temperance into the pulpit. With these critics

before him the minister is tempted to prune his sermon and his delivery to meet their requirements, and in so doing clips off the very wings which would bear the truth to the hearts of the masses. One of the brightest thinkers in the English pulpit has recently said: "If we have preached badly, as undoubtedly we have, it is partly the fault of our hearers. For they have presented to us the horns of a very awkward dilemma. When we were not interesting, they called us dry; but when we were interesting, they called us irreverent, declared that we were secularizing the pulpit, and described our sermons by the opprobrious epithet of 'lectures.' In order to avoid the second horn of the dilemma, we have thrown ourselves upon the first. It may seem strange, but it is true that, much as society grumbles at the dullness of sermons, it really would not like them to be anything else. For if they were not dull they might be practical, and it would be extremely disagreeable to listen to a man who made one feel that there was anything wrong either with one's opinions or with one's conduct. Society does not want to be disturbed. It desires only the confirmation of its prejudices. In order to preserve itself from interference, and to preserve the pulpit in a state of uselessness, it has laid down a number of rules to which the preacher is expected to conform."

But it is not merely in the matter of preaching that we are catering to the regular church-goer rather than to the unchurched public. Most of our church work is trammeled with the bonds of exclusiveness. It is done for the most part within a narrow ecclesiastical sphere, and for the favored few who happen to be directly or indirectly interested in our denomination. What attractions has the ordinary prayer-meeting for the ordinary sinner? We are surprised when we see him in the prayer-room, and wonder what brought him there. A stranger happening into a country prayermeeting sets the whole assembly agog, and is liable to be talked about for a week. Should a dozen business men or mechanics from the non-church-going classes invade the Friday evening meeting in some of our city churches, no one would be more startled than the Christians themselves. They would suspect a conspiracy of some kind.

And too often the social life of the church is as exclusive as the devotional life. It is planned and carried on with little reference to the needs of the outsiders. The Christian, instead of attending the social gathering with this question uppermost in his mind, What stranger shall I welcome and entertain to-night? goes with VOL. XII. — NO. 70.

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