Along with the gift of utterance to be required in the man who is designated to the pulpit will, almost invariably, be found a mind studiously inclined. The days are gone when it was held that study for the work of preaching the Gospel involved dishonour to the Holy Spirit and unbelief concerning the promise of the divine enlightenment and guidance. The words of Paul to Timothy are now accepted as a necessary principle of pulpit preparation. "Study to shew thyself a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," wrote the Apostle; but it is not every man who is gifted for study. Books, to some, are irksome, and much study a weariness to the flesh. They "simply cannot do it," try as ever they may. Now we will not say that such a man can never become a preacher. We will not even say that he can never become a _great_ preacher. There are some great students who read few printed books--unconscious students, you might almost call them. Again, some men arrive at great truths through intuition, and by natural endowment of words are able to express them with an artless art beyond the power of academies to teach. We must never forget that some of our greatest and most successful preachers have been "failures" at college and "hopelessly out of it" in examinations. Still, such men are exceptions, and exceptions who, in almost every instance, have, in various ways, given such proof of their exceptional endowments that there has been little danger of their lack of bookishness proving a barrier to their election for labours for which they were, from obvious evidences, designed. Notwithstanding all that may be said of these exceptional cases it should be wisely and carefully discussed whether the man who always prefers the street to the study, the crowd to the class, the newspaper to the treatise, was ever meant to spend his life in instructing his fellows in matters that call for the deepest thoughts of men.