The Gospel of the King

As I read over these pages once more before writing these prefatory words, I confess to myself that these chapters are as the five barley loaves and the two small fishes. But the hand of the Master is as able as ever to make the slenderest provender, which has been prepared with due care, suffice for the many who perish with hunger.
They are samples of the expository preaching which has been the staple of my ministry. How else could I have maintained freshness and interest through all these years? My people and I are now going through the Bible together, and these are samples of my method, such as it is.
Very few of us can be topical preachers. Only the rarest geniuses can provide a constant succession of interesting and stimulating topical sermons; but a very ordinary man­-he with two talents-can attract and retain a congregation, even amid the ever-changing conditions of the metropolis, if he is content to preach from great paragraphs of Scripture, weaving their drift and burden around central pivot texts.
It seems to me a mistake to parade authorities or bewilder hearers with a variety of possible interpretations. It is a still greater mistake to be always defending the Bible from attack. The people need positive truth and winnowed grain. I take every method of informing myself of what the best commentators, and others, have said of the paragraph which has come under consideration, and state my conclusions in the simplest and most nervous English I can command. For the rest I reckon on the co-operation and communion of the Spirit of Truth. Thus the Word of God approves itself in the heart of the hearer, and needs no further proof. By the manifestation of the truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
Reader, I pray you, ask that the light and grace of the same Spirit may accompany the reading of these pages for you and others!
F. B. MEYER.