is sometimes necessary, as in defense of some imperiled truth or principle; but the controversial form, as an ordinary characteristic of preaching, is most seriously to be deprecated. (3.) A dry, formal, metaphysical method is also to be carefully avoided; it is entirely unadapted to a popular assembly. The sermon is not a theological essay; and the preacher, therefore, in dealing with hungry souls, should ever remember, as John Newton suggests, the important distinction between bones and meat. 2. _Experimental Sermons._ Here it is vitally important to make a clear discrimination between the genuine and the spurious in religious experience. The welfare and comfort of souls depend much on this, but it is one of the most delicate and difficult parts of a pastor's work. Experimental preaching is sometimes decried as tending to turn the minds of the people inward upon their own hearts, rather than upward upon Christ, and as thus creating a habit of morbid introspection and weakening the power of Christian hope and Christian life. Undoubtedly, there is a real danger of this where the preaching is predominantly of this character; and a pastor, especially if his own spiritual tendency is intensely subjective, must be on his guard lest he present this side of truth in undue proportion, and thus hinder instead of helping the souls of his charge. But no minister should fail to preach experimental sermons; for nothing is more obvious than the large place experience has in Scripture, and the urgency and frequency of its exhortations to self-examination. Self-knowledge is of primary moment, and the pulpit should be helpful to this. The presentation of objective truth, apart from the subjective, tends to self-deception and ends in Antinomianism. The Bible is wonderfully rich and full in its delineation of character; and a careful study of these Divine pictures of life will greatly aid in the work of skillful discrimination. The Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Epistles abound in statements defining true and false experience, discriminating between "the works of the flesh" and "the fruit of the Spirit." Such books also as Edwards on _The Affections,_ Fuller on _The Backslider,_ Doddridge's _Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,_ and Hodge's _Way of Life_ are of value, often suggesting important lines of discrimination. Added to these, the study of his own heart and an intimate knowledge of the experience and character of his people will prove eminently helpful to the minister in such sermons. On this I suggest: (1.) The spiritual principles by which the true and false experience may be distinguished should be made clear and distinct. A common fault in such discourses is that they state and insist on certain exercises as characteristic of Christian experience, but do not show why they are so. The hearers are not put in possession of the principle which makes such characteristics essential. Or there