I am with Professor Shailer Mathews, D.D., in some of his strictures on the modern Sunday school, if only it be allowed that there are not a few blessed exceptions to the rule he lays down. I do not know how we should agree as to a remedy for present conditions, but one remedy would be, where there is a Bible expositor in the pulpit, to do away with certain features of the Sunday school altogether for the time being. The infant or primary departments might be retained as they are, and possibly the Bible classes for older adults, but the intermediate classes would do well to be gathered together under the instruction only of the pastor himself. In time, such a plan would beget enough teachers of the right quality and spirit to return to the former method if desired. The cabinet officer's warning and appeal are timely, for an awful harvest of infidelity and its attendant evils must be reaped in the next generation should the Church fail to arise to her responsibility as to the teaching of the unadulterated Word of God in the present one. It is for this reason that the writer pleads with his brethren to make expository preaching the staple of their pulpit ministrations. Should they have read the previous chapters in a sympathetic spirit, they will begin to do this without much urging even where they have been strangers to it hitherto. But if otherwise, then a further word, before our concluding chapter, as to the history and practicality of that kind of preaching, may throw them back on what has been said before in such a way as to catch the spirit of it and be influenced by it. [Sidenote: Expository Sermons Defined] Expository sermons differ from the textual not so much in kind as in degree. For example, the text is usually longer, and more attention is given to the explanation of the words. The text, indeed, may cover several verses, a whole chapter, or parts of more than one chapter. And the treatment need not necessarily be confined to the definition of words, but include the adjustment of the text to the context, and the amplification and illustration of the various ideas suggested. Dr. James W. Alexander, from whose _Thoughts on Preaching_ I draw generously in what follows, says: [Sidenote: The Notion of a Sermon] "Suppose a volume of human science to be placed in our hands as the sole manual or textbook to elucidate to a public assembly, in what way would it be most natural to go to work? Certainly we would not take a sentence here, and another there, and upon these separate portions frame one or two discourses every week! No interpreter of Aristotle or Littleton would dream of doing that. Nor was it adopted in the Christian Church, until the sermon ceased to be regarded in its true notion, as an explanation of the Scripture, and began to be viewed as a rhetorical entertainment, which might afford occasion for the display of subtlety, research and eloquence." [Sidenote: Inspired Sermons]