The main object of my ministrations was the illustration of God’s Holy Word. Archbishop Whately preferred “to set his watch by the sun”; and, therefore, tested the results of his own thinking, and other teachers, by a comparison of them with the decisions of Scripture. When Scripture was plain, the subject on which it pronounced a distinct judgment was regarded as fixed for ever. That method it was my desire habitually to pursue. I made it my aim, not only to interpret the meaning of a particular verse taken by itself, but to catch, and fix in my mind, the _drift_ of Apostolic thought in particular instances. It has been said, irreverently, that some expositors, when persecuted in one verse, flee to another, and the connection between the several parts of a paragraph is overlooked and lost. It was my desire to look at long _trains of thought_ in the writings of St. Paul as a sacred landscape, in which here and there a verse occurs as a lofty hill, which serves as a commanding point for surveying a landscape of thought round about. A single verse is often a key to an entire paragraph. It was my habit to go over now and then a large extent of Scripture—doctrinal, biographical, historical. “Stars of the East, or Prophets and Apostles,” formed a series of personal sketches in the Old and New Testaments, afterwards published by the Religious Tract Society. Another course, called “Lights of the World,” were illustrations of character, drawn from records of Christian experience and action, such as “William Tyndale, or Labour and Patience”; “Richard Hooker, or a Soul in Love with God’s Law and Holy Order”; and “Robert Leighton, or the Peacefulness of Faith.” Besides such methods I did not scruple to lay under contribution to the pulpit, condensed summaries of Puritan works, such as Baxter’s “Now or Never”; also I may mention that a course of Sermons on “Pilgrim’s Progress” excited much interest, and three or four of these I repeated at the close of my pastorate. As to the real value of a sermon, form must never be confounded with substance. It is vain to vote the mantle into majesty. A royal robe depends for effect on the richness of the material, not on the adjustment of its folds. Toller’s “Sermons” {248} so eulogised by Robert Hall, depend for their impressiveness, not on a careful selection of words—in this respect they are open to criticism—but upon the intrinsic majesty of such thoughts as they express. There is an obvious contrast between French and English preachers in this respect. They are more attentive to form than we are. I have witnessed effects in Parisian, and in Italian churches as well, produced by modes of delivery, such as I never saw in our own country. Young preachers in England might make their sermons more effective than they are, by greater attention paid to a mode of delivery.