Delivery

We have discussed the first two divisions named in th?. opening of the second letter,, and now we approach the third. When I advise yon to be as unlike a book as possible in the method of your delivery you will understand that I wish to dissuade you from the unnatural and evil practice of reading your sermons in the ordinary course of your ministry. You will say that this is strong language; so it is, but it is the language of strong conviction. Having tried both methods, the method of free speech and the method of reading, I can give an opinion founded upon experience, and I now give it as entirely favourable to free speech./ The pulpit will never take its proper place until the habit of reading sermons on ordinary occasions is entirely abandoned; it is official, pedantic, and heartless, and ought to be put down. Let me try to win you to the side of free speech, in other words, to the side of earnestness, reality, and power, y

I am aware that one or two objections have to be encountered at the outset, yet I fancy they are not very formidable. For instance, it has been contended that the very presence of a manuscript is itself an evidence that careful preparation has been made: the manuscript could not have been written without labour, and therefore as the minister spreads it boldly out before the eyes of the whole congregation lie mutely announces bimsell as a painstaking servant of the cliurcli. Be it so. I wish this fact to be stated with all due effect because I not yield to any man in hearty appreciation of hard work. You will altogether misconceive my meaning if YOU infer that in condemning the reading of sermons I also condemn the writing of them. On the contrary I insist upon the most critical and zealous preparation for the pulpit; I would have the minister live in his work, and for his work, and toil as in the presence of Jesus Christ, under the unquenchable inspiration of Divine love, and in the happy assurance of complete success. A terrible malediction awaits the indolent minister! Let me pray you then to acquit me of the suspicion of self-indulgence in recommending you to preach the gospel rather than to read it, for I dare not incur the responsibility even of appearing to tempt you to waste one hour of the life which is too short for the accomplishment of all its holy work. If you will follow my advice I think you will not complain of having nothing to do. Do you wish to know the method of preparation which I recommend, in view of free delivery in the pulpit? You shall have it in full. Take as your text a paragraph from the apostolic writings. Read it carefully in the original language; trace the various meanings which may be attached to its principal words in other parts of the New Testament; having satisfied yourself as to the grammar and meaning of the passage, commit your decision to writing, and then take the opinion of two or three of the most critical expositors, and see how far your judgment accords with theirs; having thus secured a firm standing-place (which is often quite unattainable without rigid criticism) you may write in regular order the principal thoughts wliicli the passage suggests to your mindj and this memorandum will be the skeleton of you*- discourse; now proceed to elaboration writing upon wide lines so as to leave room for erasure and interlining; having completed a full draft of all your divisions, begin at the beginning, and strike out all the long words and all the superfine expressions; let them go, without murmuring! Particularly strike out all such words as methinks I see,” cherubim and seraphim,” ‘’ the glinting stars,” the stellar heavens,” “the circumambient air,” the rustling wings,” “the pearly gates,” “the glistening dew,” *Hhe meandering rills,” and ‘“‘’ the crystal battlements of heaven.” I know how pretty they look to the young eye, and how sweetly they sound in the young ear; but let them go without a sigh: if you have spoken of God as the Deity, put your pen through the word Deity “and write “God” in its stead; if you are tempted to tell your hearers that Jonah spent a portion of his life under the cai’e of a “submarine custodian,” dont hesitate to say plainly that it was only a whale; if you should so far forget yourself as to write the word “pandemonium,” put it out and write the monosyllable over its ruins; and if in a moment o delirium you should write my beloved, come with me on the pinions of imagination, pause, and consider soberly whether you had not on the whole better remain where you are.. This process being completed, greatly to the disfigurement of your manuscript, re-write the discourse with the most watchful care, determined that everybody who hears you shall not be left in doubt of

Belicery. 41

jour meaning; write as if every line might save a life; and when you have made an end of writing, put the manuscript away, and go to your public work with the assurance that all faithful and loving service is accepted of the Father and will be crowned with His effectual blessing. Work thus diligently at the beginning of your ministry, say for the first five or seven years, and the advantage of the discipline will show itself down to your latest effort as a preacher. You will see then that my advice to speak freely in the pulpit gives you no licence to go up with an empty head and an unbridled tongue; it does not permit you to trifle with your opportunities, or to give your hearers a stone when they perish for lack of bread; it binds you to the severest preparation, and holds you guilty before God if you keep back any ‘’ part of the price.’’^ What is said by Henry Rogers upon prose composition generally may be said with equal truth respecting the composition of sermons in particular. Let me lay before you his weighty words: ^’ Perhaps it may not be superfluous to remind the young minister that if he would attain more than correctness, or even a fluent facility; if he would impress upon his compositions that individuality without which they cannot live, he must ever keep in mind that prose may be possessed of nearly as various excellence as poetry, and as much requires sedulous self-culture, profound meditation of the subject-matter, familiar acquaintance with the best models (models sufficiently numerous to prevent that mannerism which results from unconscious imitation if there be too familiar converse with some one), and that limcB labor,’ that patient revision, which is the condition of all excellence, literary or otherwise.”

42 Ad Gleriim: Adolces to a Young Preacher,

Believe this, and your sermons will never fail of the simplicity condensation and pungency “without wliicli they will do little good. As I use the word ^’ simplicity” I am reminded of Lord Jeffreys happy expression: ‘’ Simplicity is the last attainment of progressive literature; and men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary/^ You will forgive the momentary digression for the sake of the profound wisdom.

You will probably suggest in favour of sermons that are read that they secure for the preacher great accuracy, refinement, and variety of expression. No doubt this may be so; at the same time it may be worth while to consider whether such advantages may not cost too much, that is to say whether they are not often secured at the expense of the instruction and edification of many hearers. Everything, in the settlement of such a question, depends upon the preacher’s position. If his position be so exceptional as to give him the advantage of addressing well-trained men who can follow the course of a close argument and appreciate the niceties of refined expression, he is bound to be faithful to the claims of his position; if, on the other hand, as will be found to be generally the case, he is called upon to minister to a miscellaneous congregation, of which probably not more than one person in ten may have received other than a common school education, he is bound as the servant of Jesus Christ, who pleased not Himself but endured the deepest humiliation, not to consider his own cultivated tastes and the cultivated tastes of half-a-dozen of his people, but to study carefully what is best adapted to the capacity, the habits, and the wants of the congregation as a whole. Is lie the servant of the few or of fhe many? LuTHEE said of himself as a preacher that he took no notice of the doctors who heard him of whom there were about forty, but preached to the young men and servants, of whom there were about two thousand. You will not hesitate to say that Luther was right. He was right, too even so far as the doctors were concerned, because as learned men they did not need mere criticism or brilliance of expression, while as sinners before God they did continually require to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. For whom then are you anxious to secure all the technical accuracy and finish which are supposed to be the excellences of read discourses? Your congregation will, to a large extent, be composed of persons who have all the week been engaged in some department of business, who have been tried by many disappointments, perhaps too tormented by many temptations; you will have heads of houses whose lives are troubled with many anxieties, you will have youths who are fast becoming entangled in the snares which beset inexperienced feet, and little children whose every look is a wonder which should be lovingly answered: such will be your congregation; what will you supply in the way of teaching? You may ^Drepare two elaborate essays weekly, which are sublimely indifferent to all the troubles and burdens of common life; you may play the philosophic theologian twice a-week in the presence of men who have no heart to follow you in your mocking speculations; you may display your scholastic trinkets upon your pulpit-board, to the amazement of the vulgar and the disgust of the thoughtful; you may write the most faultless sentences and elaborate the most skilful paragraphs, and you may become absorbed in the idolatry of your own genius: butj my dear sir, in doing all this are you the servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the common people heard gladly, and who made Himself of no reputation? Are you a preacher of the Cross? Are you inspired by an ardent desire for the salvation of men? I think I know your answer. You will say that in writing your sermons you will write simply and earnestly, under the impulse of Christian love, and with a single eye to the great object of the gospel ministry; you will write practically; you will instruct, exhort, appeal, with all prayerful earnestness, and your composition shall be more marked by your Christianity than your scholarship. I rejoice in such a resolution, yet I adhere to my advice — be a

Preacher not a Reader of the gospel! Remember the pungent but truthful words of Sydney Smith: ^’ Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking to reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more ludicrous than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind; and so affected at a preconcerted line and page that he is unable to proceed any further! ‘^ It is but poor eloquence that comes of such a process, and its very vehemence only confirms ones suspicion of its artificialism. Why not address your people in a free, natural, and hearty manner? Why preach at them, when it is your business to preach to them? From these questions you will rightly infer that in my opimon your sermon skould always be ^9ar oj yourself; instead of saying “I have my sermon,” you should say “I am my sermon,” and then you will speak livingly and fearlessly. I am acquainted with a minister who reads the most eloquent papers (sermons he would incorrectly term them) to his people; they are elaborate, rhetorical,, sensational liigWy polished in expression and always ready for the press: in reading those papers my friend works himself into the intensest excitement, he swings his right arm in a threatening manner, and jerks his left hand as if it were always in an inconvenient place; occasionally he stamps his foot, and throughout his effort there are many signs of excitement. I have looked at him with wonder, but my admiration has always suffered considerably as I have thought that if the manuscript could be removed he would not be able to keep the attention of his hearers for five minutes. I object to being read at when I go to hear the gospel. Why, I ask again, don’t ministers speak to their people, as if the sermon came from the heart and was meant to do them good? I am aware that my friend’s sermons are not unfrequently spoken of as “very finished,” “wonderfully thought out,” ‘’’very elaborate,” and “highly eloquent;” but I never hear a sentence quoted, nor am I aware that the hearers are ever compelled to forget the speaker in his subject. On the other hand, I can point you to a man who never takes a note into the pulpit, whose sermons are never praised as elaborate or finished, yet whose words are quoted all the week long, and whose prayers linger in the memory as blessings and helps to the whole life. Truly, this man’s sermons are not prepared for the press; they are prepared for the understanding and the heart alone; and long after the voice of the artificial rhetorician has been forgotten the sharp,, clear penetrating words of the natuial orator will abide in grateful recollection.

It may be worth while to remind you in this connection that God has been pleased to bless in an extraordinary degree a kind of preaching which, in point of technical value, has been almost contemptible. Look at Whitefields sermons, — where is the logic, the profound

doctrine, the accurate criticism, the instructive exposition, which are so justly esteemed by thoughtful Christians? Yet those sermons, without any pretence to learning or ingenuity, stormed the nation. Mr. Spue-GEON has never been regarded as what is generally understood as a “finished” preacher; he is no pulpit essayist; he is not a cunning contriver of pretty sentences; yet he has done a work in the Christian pulpit which can never be forgotten. The principle so strikingly illustrated in these marked examples has been almost as fully illustrated in the case of the great Methodist preachers, as

also in the case of the popular ministers of Wales. ) Whitefield and Spurgeon cannot be ranked with educated men; neither of them can be said to have had any proper theological training; yet both of them are names which can never perish from the most conspicuous page of the history of the British pulpit. It seems as if God had always used things that are base and weak, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are, and that in all high and Divine concerns He had determined that the stone which the builders rejected should become the head stone of the corner. Many ministers will tell you that sermons on whose composition they have expended their strength have hardly ever been referred to as the means of awakening or edifying their hearer Sj whilst sermons in whose structure and elaboration there was neither genius nor eloquence have brought many to thoughtfulness and decision. Undoubtedly this fact may be abused by the self-indulgent hireling, but let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord, — he shall be as a withered branch, not as a green and fruit.. tree. I once asked Me. Binney what he thought was the best method of preaching, and he replied,” to gather your materials, and set fire to them in the pulpit.^^ Think of this: the words are full of meaning; to gather your materials means to work hard, to turn all things into mental and spiritual richer, and to be thoroughly furnished; to ‘’ set fire to them m the pulpit ^’ means to have that elevation and holy enthusiasm of Christian love which cannot be depressed by fear of man nor be made indifferent to the claims of truth. In a word then, no essays in the pulpit! I know what can be said about accuracy, polish, variety, culture, and so forth; yet in full view of it all I repeat, nO essays in the pulpit — no pathos, scientifically punctuated and paragraphed — no entreaty exquisitely polished — no theatrical pedantry under the guise of Christian earnestness.

At the risk of what may look like an unjust suspicion of your memory, I must remind you of my abhorrence of unprepared sermons. The question before us is not whether sermons shall be ]jreiDared, but how they shall be delivered after they have been prepared. I have ventured to set you some hard work in the preparation, and now I may seem to call you to equally hard work in the delivery of your discourses. Be it so: hard work is good for us all; in all labour there is profit, specially in the labour which is spent for God. As your pastoral work increases, and the claims upon your public service become more urgent, you will not find time for the toilsome preparation which has been recommended for your early years; you will then require some readier method of arranging your material for the pulpit, and in view of this necessity it may help you to decision if you are made acquainted with the practice of two or three eminent speakers.

In his review of Currants biography, Lord Jeffrey says: ‘’^ He is here said to have spoken extempore at his first coming to the Bar; but when his rising reputation made him more chary of his fame, he tried for some time to write down, and commit to memory, the more important parts of his pleadings. The result however was not at all encouraging; and he soon laid aside his pen so entirely as scarcely even to make any notes in preparation. He meditated his subjects however, when strolling in his garden, or more frequently while idling over his violin, and often prepared in this way those splendid passages and groups of images with which he was afterwards to dazzle and enchant his admirers. The only notes he made were often of the metaphors he proposed to employ, and these of the utmost brevity. For the grand peroration, for example, in H. Rowans case, his notes were as follows: — ‘Character of Mr. R.: Furnace — Rebellion — Smothered — Stalks — Redeeming Spirit.^ From such slight hints he spoke fearlessly, and without cause for fear. With the help of such a scanty chart, he plunged boldly into the unbuoyed channel of his cause, and trusted himself to the torrent of his own eloquence with, no better guidance than such landmarks as these. It almost invariably happened however that the experiment succeeded; ’ that his own expectations were far exceeded; and that, when his mind came to be more intensely heated by his subject, and by that inspiring confidence which a public audience seldom fails to infuse into all who are sufficiently gifted to receive it, a multitude of new ideas, adding vigour or ornament, were given off; and it also happened that in the same prolific moments, and as their almost inevitable consequence, some crude and fantastic notions escaped, which, if they impeach the author s taste, at least leave him the merit of a splendid fault which none but men of genius can commit,”

Let me call your attention to three points arising out of this statement. First of all, cultivate to the fullest extent the great gift of mental composition. In my estimation the value of this gift cannot be over-stated. It not only saves the drudgery but the time demanded by writing, and it sets the speaker at liberty to take the exercise which is essential to the preservation of health. One of the most distinguished preachers, whose name is universally honoured, told me that he could compose a fti sermon from beginning to end without ever writing a word! Why some of us, poor slaves, cannot compose a dozen sentences unless we are shut up in the silent study and have the best writing materials at command. In confidence I may tell you that of all such slaves I may almost claim to be chief. Many a time I have gone into the quiet lanes with a steady determination to compose a sermon; but before I have got far enough to require a semicolon, my truant mind has taken up with some more tempting though less profitable subject. Then would come shame, and then renewed courage; another sentence would be boldly begun, but alas the very next horse that passed me would carry away my thoughts with it, and I would be left in deeper humiliation. Take warning from this example, and if you have any such gift as Curran had, do allow me to urge you to cultivate it with the most painstaking diligence. Its exercise will almost double your life, and will certainly impart to your speech a freshness and strength which are unattainable, except in very rare cases, by the monastic penman. — The second point arising out of the statement is the awkward difiiculty which is often occasioned by the brevity of ones memoranda. In Rowans case Curran jotted down the word ‘^ Fitrnace,” hnt imagine his embarrassment if on coming to that word he could not have recalled the train of thought which it was intended to suggest! Many a time, on looking over the notes which have been prepared for the pulpit, I have asked, Whatever did I mean when I wrote that V^ and therefore, in recollection of my own embarrassment, let me advise you to be explicit in your notes, so that your invention may not be hampered by a faithless memory. — The third point is the possibility of violating good taste in the rapidity of extemporaneous speech. You cannot be sure that the right word will infallibly come at the right moment. The speaker has fully committed himself to his work; he cannot hesitate or pause to correct himself, he must go on; and under this tyrannous necessity he may again and again ofiFend good taste, a fact of which he is even more painfully aware than his most fastidious hearer can be. It is then a question of comparison of advantages; a written speech may of course be always correct, whereas an extemporaneous (tliougli well-considered) oration may be marred by basty and ill-regulated expressions; on the whole however, having regard to the great object of preaching, free speech in the pulpit is in my opinion infinitely preferable to the most finished written composition.

Whitefield, if be can be said to have bad any method of preparation at all, adopted a course which it would be unsafe to recommend indiscriminately. On this point CoENELius Winter has given us the benefit of bis personal recollections: ^’ The time Mr. Whitefield set apart for preparations for the pulpit, during my connection with him, was not to be distinguished from the time be appropriated to other business. If he wanted to write a pamphlet upon any occasion, he was closeted; nor would be allow access to him but on an emergency, while be was engaged in the work. But I never knew him engaged in the composition of a sermon until he was on board ship, when he employed himself partly in the composition of sermons, and reading very attentively the history of England written by different authors. He bad formed a design of writing the history of Methodism, but never entered upon it. He was never more in retirement on a Saturday than on another day, nor sequestered at any particular time for a period longer than be used for his ordinary devotions. I never met with anything like the form of a skeleton of a sermon among bis papers, with which I was permitted to be very familiar; nor did he ever give me any idea of the importance of being habituated to the planning of a sermon. It is not injustice to his great character to say I believe be knew

E 2

nothing about such a kind of exercise. Usually for an hour or two before lie entered the pulpit he claimed retirement; and on a sabbath morning more particularly he was accustomed to have darkens Bible, Matthew Henry’s Comment, and Cruden’s Concordance within his reach: his frame at that time was more than ordinarily devotional. I say more than ordinarily, because, though there was a vast vein of pleasantry usually in him, the intervals of conversation evidently appeared to be filled up with private ejaculation connected with praise. His rest was much interrupted, and his thoughts were much engaged with God in the night. He has often said at the close of his very warm address, This sermon I got when most of you who now hear me were fast asleep.’’ He made very minute observations, and was much disposed to be conversant with life, from the lowest mechanic to the first characters in the land. He let nothing escape him, but turned all into gold that admitted of improvement; and, in one way or another, the occurrence of the week or the day furnished him with matter for the pulpit.^’

Can you wonder, other things being equal, that such a man was the most attractive preacher of his day? Could any one have stolen George Whitefield’s sermon? Can you imagine him looking round on Sunday morning for his black book, and showing a little nervousness because he could not lay his hand upon it in a moment? Can you fancy him fretful because the fogginess of the morning would probably interfere with his comfort in reading his manuscript? Why, George Whitefield lijas the sermon: it was m him as part of his very life; and his word was therefore with living power. If you ask me

what I mean by being as unlike a book as possible, I answer, look at George Whitefield, the natural, devout, fervid, and impressive preacher. I cannot find what may be termed a bookish sentence in any of his sermons; everywhere there is the vivacity, the point, the abruptness of free and earnest speech. Take the peroration of his sermon upon” The Kingdom of God,^^ and say whether you can imagine such an appeal to have been written as books are written: mark the simplicity, the directness, the stormy yet tender vehemence of the exhortation: —

^’ My dear friends, I would preach with all my heart till midnight, to do you good, till I could preach no more. Oh that this body might hold out to speak more for my dear Redeemer! Had I a thousand lives, had I a thousand tongues, they should be employed in inviting sinners to come to Jesus Christ! Come then, let me prevail with some of you to come along with me. Come, poor, lost, undone sinner; come just as you are to Christ, and say. If I be damned I will perish at the feet of Jesus Christ, where never one perished yet. He will receive you with open arms; the dear Redeemer is willing to receive you all. Fly then for your lives. The devil is in you while unconverted; and will you go with the devil in your heart to bed this night? God Almighty knows if ever you and I shall see one another again. In one or two days more I must go, and perhaps I may never see you again till I meet you at the judgment-day. 0 my dear friends, think of that solemn meeting; think of that important hour, when the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, when the elements shall melt with fervent heat, when the sea and the grave shall be giving up their dead, and all shall be summoned to appear before the great God. What will you do then, if the kingdom of God is not erected in your hearts? You must go to the devil — like must go to like — if you are not converted; Christ hath asserted it in the strongest manner: Yerily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, Who can dwell with devouring fire? Who can dwell with everlasting burnings? Oh, my heart is melting with love to you. Surely God intends to do good to your poor souls. Will no one be persuaded to accept of Christ? If those who are settled Pharisees will not come, I desire to speak to you who are drunkards, sabbath-breakers, cursers and swearers — will you come to Christ? I know that many of you come here out of curiosity: though you come only to see the congregation, yet if you come to Jesus Christ Christ will accept of you. Are there any cursing, swearing soldiers here? Will you come to Jesus Christ, and list yourself under the banner of the dear Redeemer? You are all welcome to Christ. Are there any little boys or little girls here? Come to Christ, and He will erect His kingdom in you. There are many little children whom God is working on, both at home and abroad. Oh, if some of the little lambs would come to Christ they shall have peace and joy in the day that the Redeemer shall set up His kingdom in their hearts. Parents, tell them that Jesus Christ will take them in His arms, that He will dandle them on His knees. All of you, old and young, you that are old and grey-headed, come to Jesus Christ, and you shall be kings and priests to your God. The Lord will abundantly pardon you at the eleventh hour. He, every one of you that thirsteth.’’ If there be any of you ambitious of honour, do you want a crown. a sceptre? Come to Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ will give you a kingdom that no man shall take from you,”

This is not what you would call a finished literary style, it is too exclamatory and hortative to be expressed fully in type; but let the words be spoken with melodious power of voice and accompanied by all the signs of earnestness which characterized George Whitefields ministry, and one can conceive the effect which they would produce upon a mixed congregation. The people would feel that the minister was intent upon their salvation, and that everything was made subordinate to that end. There is a marked personality in the appeal; the preacher seems resolved to address his hearers actually by name, lest any man should imagine himself excluded from the happy invitations of the gospel. ‘*” He had,^^ says Cornelius Winter, “a most peculiar art of speaking personally to you, in a congregation of four thousand people, when no one would suspect his object,^”* — a wonderful power, yet one that should be constantly under the control of the severest prudence.

A very different man was Feederick William Robertson, yet he furnishes a striking illustration of what is meant by being as unlike a book as possible. “So entirely was his heart in his words, that, in public speaking especially, he lost sight of everything but his subject. His self-consciousness vanished. He did not choose his A words, or think about his thoughts. He not only possessed, but was possessed by, his idea; and when all was over, and the reaction came, he had forgotten, like a dream, words, illustrations, almost everything.... He spoke under tremendous excitement, but it was excitement reined in by will. He held in his hand, when he began his sermon, a small slip of paper, with a few notes upon it. He referred to it now and then; but before ten minutes had gone by it was crushed to uselessness in his grasp; for he knit his fingers together over it, as he knit his words over his thought.-’^ Why? Because he was intensely in earnest. I cannot see how a man who is thoroughly in earnest can content himself with reading a paper to his congregation. The man may unquestionably be pious, sincere, wishful to do good, and very industrious in all his ministerial habits; but how he can be bound down by his paper, and stand from year to year reading his literary productions, instead of crying out with irrepressible emotion that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it is beyond my power to explain. ‘As every sound is not music, so every sermon is not preaching, but worse than if he should read a homily... What a shame is this, that the preachers should make preaching be despised! In Jeremiah xlviii. there is a curse upon them which do the business of the Lord negligently; if this curse do not touch them which do the chiefest business of the Lord negligently it cannot take hold of any other. Therefore let every preacher first see how his notes do move himself, and then he shall have comfort to deliver them to others like an experienced medicine which himself hath proved.” These are the words of the *”*■ silver-tongued^ Puritan, Henet Smith. You will probably express a fear that you will break down if you attempt to speak in the way which has been recommended. Your fear does not deter me from repeating the advice. Break down in the right way, rather than succeed in the wrong one I Show yourself so deeply in earnest for the salvation of your hearers as to deliver yourself from the snare of so unworthy an apprehension; and if you should break down, pray God the Helper of the weak to make your failure a means of magnifying His own grace; when we are weak then are we strong; there is a breaking down which is mortifying to our personal vanity, there is another breaking down which brings us closely and tenderly to God in humble and perfect trust. Are you not a servant of God? May you not draw from the fulness of His love? Will He not honour your secret labour with public success? Cease to think of yourself other than as the messenger of God, the ambassador of Jesus Christ; and you shall speak, probably with many technical imperfections, but with a simplicity and power which must do good to your hearers. The words of a celebrated writer are so appropriate to this point that I am sure you will excuse the length of the quotation for the sake of the nobility and pertinence of the sentiment: — There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight, whether of ear or intellect, we shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a golden fringe round it and a

goodly cushion in front of it, and if the sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the cushion in a majestic manner before beginning: all this we shall duly come to expect; but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy confidence of being provided with another when it shall be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many souls in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavour to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the worlds temptation, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing up in their hearts, and to see what wheat has been scattered there snatched from the wayside by this wild bird and the other; and at last, — when breathless and weary with the weeks labour, they give him this interval of imperfect and languid hearing — he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the entrance of those dark streets where wisdom herself has stretched forth her hands and no man regarded; thirty minutes to raise the dead in — let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be delivered, which * either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live,

or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them — we shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger; we shall wish that his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst,”’ *

Let us hear the words of this strange but friendly watchman, and go resolutely and trustfully in the direction which they indicate. You will observe that the whole of my advice has proceeded upon the recognition of special occasions upon which the use of the manuscript may be justified; occasions, for example, on which the preacher may be addressing not only his equals but his superiors in culture and information, or occasions which demand a Irigh effort in criticism or controversy; there may too be occasions on which it is important to restrain all passion and to give a judicial statement of a difficult subject; nay more, I will go even farther, and freely allow that a settled minister, whose duty it is to teach as well as to preach, may now and again ask his people to listen to an essay or a series of essays upon doctrines which they may be advanced enough to understand and aypreciate. All this however is very different from the regular work of the ordinary ministry, and it is to this regular work alone that the most of my remarks have been directed. Yolx will of course remind me that Dr. Chalmers read

* John Euskin, “Stones of Yenice,” -vol. ii., chap. 1, § 12, 13, 14.

his sermons and that several eminent men are in the habit of doing the same. Quite so; but tliougli Dr. Chalmers read it does not follow that all who read are Dr. Chalmerses. Don’t be startled at the suggestion that Dr. Chalmers and the eminent men referred to cannot in mj opinion justly be called preachers! Call them effective readers of eloquent addresses; call them dignified or vehement repeaters of elaborate dissertations; but preachers in the apostolic sense of the term they certainly ought not to be called. They read well; their intensity was in their favour so was their calm dignity: but they were not preachers. Peter and Paul were preachers; Knox and Bunyan were preachers; Wesley and Whitefield were preachers; (Christmas Evans and John Elias ‘^ were preachers;) may their mantle fall upon our rising ministry 1