It is rather a delicate subject to touch upon, but I am happy to say that in my early ministry the preachers of God's Word were not hamstrung by any doubt of the divine inspiration or infallibility of the Book that lay before them on their pulpits. The questions, "Have we got any Bible?" and "If any Bible, how much?" had not been hatched. When I was in Princeton Seminary, our profoundly learned Hebrew Professor, Dr. J. Addison Alexander no more disturbed us with the much-vaunted conjectural Biblical criticisms than he disturbed us with Joe Smith's "golden plates" at Nauvoo. For this fact I feel deeply thankful; and I comfort myself with the reflection that the great British preachers of the last dozen years--Dr. McLaren, Charles H. Spurgeon, Newman Hall, Canon Liddon, Dr. Dale and Dr. Joseph Parker--have suffered no more from the virulent attacks of the radical and revolutionary higher criticism than I have, during my long and happy ministry. Ministers had some advantages sixty or seventy years ago over their successors of our day. They had a more uninterrupted opportunity for the preparation of their sermons and for thorough personal visitation of their flocks. They were not importuned so often to serve on committees and to be participants in all sorts of social schemes of charity. Every pastor ought to keep abreast of reformatory movements as long as they do not trench upon the vital and imperative duties of his high calling. "This one thing I do," said single-hearted Paul; and if Paul were a pastor now in New York or Boston or Chicago, he would make short work of many an intrusive rap of a time-killer at his study door. I have noted frankly a few of the changes that I have observed in the methods of our American pulpit during my long life, but not, I trust, in a pessimistic or censorious spirit God forbid that I should disparage the noble, conscientious, self-denying and Heaven-blessed labors of thousands of Christ's ministers in our broad land! They have greater difficulties to encounter than I had when I began my work. They are surrounded with an atmosphere of intense materialism. The ambition for the "seen things" increasingly blinds men to the "things that are unseen and eternal." Wealth and worldliness unspiritualize thousands of professed Christians. The present artificial arrangements of society antagonize devotional meetings and special efforts to promote revivals. On Sabbath mornings many a minister has to shovel out scores of his congregation from under the drifts (not very clean snow either) of the mammoth Sunday newspapers.