The true reason that doctrinal sermons are decried by some of the ministers is, that they afford no opportunity for them to introduce, perhaps, some style or course of reading that inclination may have led them to adopt. True scriptural teaching calls for sound argument, and substantial treatises upon the word, and is a strong test of mental capacity; whereas such sermons as are too often delivered to the people run upon miscellaneous themes, that were more properly left for newspaper or magazine articles, and are of a school of composition that a shallow brain may become a proficient in. We are most forcibly reminded in this connection of the words of a certain English bishop, who was travelling in this country a few years since, and who made the remark, that ministers here take a text from the Bible and preach about railroads, astronomy, statuary and painting; but that in his country they not only select their texts from the Bible, but they make its doctrines and principles the subject of their discourses. That wise old divine, Jeremy Taylor, found it necessary in his day to chide these fashionable preachers. "They entertain their hearers," said he, "with gaudy tulips and useless daffodils, and not with the bread of life and medicinal plants, growing on the margin of the fountains of salvation." The true doctrine of the Scriptures is the very fountain-head of all morality, and those who talk so much about preaching moral sermons and avoiding doctrinal ones, should pause and consider well their own inconsistency. Mr. Ballou's sermons were strictly doctrinal ones, ay, emphatically so; but they were none the less moral also. The principles are synonymous, as must be evident to any thoughtful mind. That was excellent advice given to a pious son by Rowland Hill, to preach nothing _down_ but the devil, and nothing _up_ but Jesus Christ. The pulpit in these modern times has been sadly perverted by some in all denominations; its legitimate and holy purpose has been lost sight of by many; and any predominating hobby of its occupant is rode rough-shod over the heads of the congregation, to the almost entire detriment of his usefulness as a religious teacher. They dress up the tenets of faith in modern livery to please the popular taste, and, perhaps, their own vanity, forgetting that "religion helmeted is religion no more." The minister seems, too, often thoughtless of the fact, that while he preaches, Almighty God is one of his hearers; the various _isms_ of the times are made to take the place of holy writ, and sermons are overcharged with abstruse questions and transcendental ideas; or perhaps so labored with rhetorical flourishes and ornaments, that the hearer, who seeks to be led by the straight and narrow way, finds himself losing sight of the grand purpose and end of wisdom, while he tarries by the way-side to admire the gaudy-colored flowers that line the road.