The text should sustain, suggest, and give tone to the sermon. The main thought of the text should usually be the main thought of the sermon. A text … - John Hall

When the captain throws out his sheet-anchor, and the ship "rides at anchor," as it is called, there is a great strain on every link of that chain; and if one bad link breaks, off goes the anchor, and the ship is driven before the winds, and may be destroyed. Now, our character is very much like the chain; one bad piece vitiates and spoils it. So we must have a pure character.

A strong church is made up of well-ordered families, where intelligent, Christian parents bring up their children in the fear of the Lord, where the home of the week has its counterpart in the home of the Sabbath, where the hopes and joys of the living, and the blessed memories of the dead bind to the Lord and His church, where young men and maidens are glad when it is said to them, " Let us go unto the house of the Lord," where the tranquillity, and purity, and holy peace, the light and the love, form to the opening minds of the children a type and prophecy of the eternal Sabbath and the heaven above.

To get, then, the mind of Christ,'and to declare it, is the primary end of the teaching offices of the church. The living body of sympathetic men, saturated with the truth and feeling of the Book, must bring it into contact with other men, through that marvelous organ the human voice, and with such aid as comes from the subtle sympathy that pervades assemblies of human beings.