printed, but few sermons. You have bestowed your time and labour on secondary and inferior things. One thing is needful.

You have been favoured by Providence with a degree of acceptance as a writer which you had not dared to expect, and for which you cannot be too thankful; but the same little attractions might have been cast around the great things of the kingdom. Consider these hints.

1. If your life be spared, you will never see a time in which, better than now, you can lay up a store of sermons. Eyesight, manual dexterity, memory, and vivacity must necessarily be on the wane.

2. Consider in what manner you have produced those things which have gained a little popularity. They have all been written currente calamo; especially those which have most life in them were so written. Not so most of your sermons. Turn over a new leaf. Do not lay out new plans too carefully. Write while you are warm. Do not be avaricious of your best thoughts, nor reserve warm ideas for the last. This is like flooding the stomachs of guests with soups before dinner. Much of Jay's excellence arises from this. Try your father's recommendation of writing with great rapidity what first occurs to you. This you may methodise afterwards.

3. You study much of the Scriptures, and sometimes warm over the sacred page. Avail yourself of these moments, and let your discoveries and suggestions flow into the channel of a

sermon.

4. Be willing to write even part of a sermon. Perhaps you will do the whole. If not, remember how few of these fragments have ever been lost to you; is there one, the time spent on which you regret?

5. You have prayed to have your tastes, feelings, and pursuits more concentrated on Divine things; and, for a short time past, you have felt as if this grace had in some degree been granted to you. Cherish this feeling, and make it available towards pulpit exercises.

6. God has granted you better health. Be tenderly thankful for such a benefit, and keep your harness always bright, that you may be ready, as soon as God shall cause the trumpet to sound, to go out into the regular ranks.

7. You have a text-book. Use it. Spend more time on it. Collect your scattered fragments. Mortify that procrastination which keeps so many plans in petto.

Offhand Writing.-If I have ever written anything acceptably, it has been with a free pen, and from the full heart; not from compiled stores, though I have done much of the latter also. One who has preached in so many fields, and exactly surveyed so few, had well confine himself to this sort of offhand

and discursive composition. What is the reason that, having plainly shown a turn for a lively, superficial, easy kind of chat, enlivened by a few out-of-the-way stories, &c., &c., I have never perpetrated anything like a book of the kind, save the two books for the working-folks, which were mere strung beads? And why have I, contrary to my natural turn, always preached in the commonplace humdrum manner, instead of giving free vent to the things that come into my head? I have been gathering long enough; it is time for me to write more, and to write something which may attract attention to the things of God, and do good to people who will not read heavy, learned books. I have penned a great deal, but mostly under some constraint, which has pent me up and hampered me. It is high time that I followed nature, and let out the stream without constraint. Sometimes I have written for children, and this was of course a great restraint; at other times for newspapers, where I had to be very short, or very careful not to offend; and in the case of the Sunday-School Journal, for which I have done a good deal, I have had to avoid everything sectarian. When I wrote for the Review, which pieces have been most laboured, I have necessarily tied myself up to the formal paces demanded in such affairs. And, as I said, my sermons have never got clear of the formality with which I unfortunately began to write. I am conscious of a great desire to use my poor and almost single talent of writing for the people, in some way which may recommend religion more than I have ever done yet.

Earnest Preaching. I have been reading an article on the Eloquence of the Pulpit in the Montauban "Revue Théologique" for the present month, written by Adolphe Monod. It is one of the best things I ever read on the subject. He makes elocution to depend on the inward conception and feeling. The work must begin from within.

The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent, one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest, or he cannot be effective. We have loud and vehement, we have smooth and graceful, we have splendid and elaborate preaching, but very little that is earnest. One man who so feels for the souls of his hearers as to be ready to weep over them, will assuredly make himself felt. This is what makes effective; he really feels what he says. This made Cookman eloquent. This especially was the charm of Summerfield, above all men I ever heard. We must aim therefore at high degrees of warmth in our religious exercises, if we would produce an impression upon the public mind. Two or three such preachers in our Old School Church as is, would make themselves felt throughout the country. O!

that we had them! O! that those we have were inspired with greater zeal!

Without any increase of our numbers, the very men we now have, if actuated with burning zeal for God, might work a mighty reformation in our country.

New Sermons.-Philip Henry used to love to preach sermons which were "newly studied." It is a crying sin of mine that I am so ready to go to my old store. Even when I preach to the blacks I ought, for my own sake no less than for theirs, to prepare a plan and study it out. If I daily had on hand some sermon on an important passage, I should be daily learning more Scripture and more theology.

Great Subjects.-Again, I am impressed with what I have already mentioned in this book, viz., the importance of choosing great subjects for sermons, such as Creation, the Deluge, the Atonement, the Last Things. This is the more important, considering that I preach only occasionally, and write seldom." These discourses ought to be highly elaborated. I have no sermons such as I ought to preach, and such as I think I have preached extempore. Humphrey's remarks on easy engraving have given me new thoughts on easy writing. I have often intended to write out a discourse which I have preached with some sense of doing better than common, but, as far as I remember, I have never yet done it.

Themes for Preaching.-They should be great themes-the great themes. There are many. Evil of dwelling on the smaller themes. They are such as move the feelings. The great questions which have agitated the world-which agitate our own bosoms-which we should like to have settled before we die-which we should ask an Apostle about if he were here. These are to general Scripture truth what great mountains are in geography. Some, anxious to avoid hackneyed topics, omit the greatest. Just as if we should describe Switzerland and omit the Alps.

Some ministers preach twenty years, and yet never preach on Judgment, Hell, the Crucifixion, the essence of saving faith, nor on those great themes which in all ages affect children, and affect the common mind, such as the Deluge, the sacrifice intended of Isaac, the death of Absalom, the parable of Lazarus. The Methodists consequently pick out these striking themes, and herein they gain a just advantage over us.

A man should begin early to grapple with great subjects. An athlete (2 Tim. ii. 5) gains might only by great exertions. So that a man does not overstrain his powers, the more he wrestles the better, but he must wrestle, and not merely take a great subject, and dream over it or play with it.

Evil of seeking new and recondite subjects. All the great

He was at this time Professor in the College of New Jersey.

subjects are old and often treated. False refinement and wiredrawing. Analogy of the great sculptors and painters. Many took the same themes. Greek tragedians. No two men will treat the same subject alike, unless they borrow from one another.

Sermon-writing. As I consider sermonizing a great art, and one of the chief employments of a minister, I think it good from time to time to set down the results of my experience; though I have a painful consciousness of my own want of proficiency.

In the early part of my ministry there were two methods of preparation which I highly valued, both of which I now reject. 1. It was my manner to take some doctrinal head, such as Justification, and carefully to read the best authors on it, such as Calvin, Witsius, Markius, Dwight, making notes as I went along, and then endeavouring, when I wrote, to introduce the best things I could remember from these authors. I had not then learned that the only way to profit from such authors is to let their matter digest in the mind, and then to write freely, with a total forgetfulness of them. Only in this way does it become our own. Only in this way does it take a natural method, and have a natural liveliness. It is difficult to reject the things remembered, and the effort at recollection is itself an incumbrance. I would advise a preacher, in preparation, to take no notes. I would advise him to take no schedule of arrangement from another. If one thinks at all for himself, his train of thoughts will be his own, and this will suggest its own arrangement. There is something unreasonable in setting out with a preadjusted method. It is to attempt a classification before we have that which is to be classified. It produces a stiffness, hardness, and want of continuity, which are great faults. The true way is, be full of the subject, and then write with perfect freedom, beginning at any corner of the subject.

2. Another method which I pursued was to choose a text, and then, having written out in full all the parallel passages, to classify them, and found my divisions on this classification. Then to correct all these passages, interweaving them with my own remarks. I flattered myself that this was a happy method, because it made my sermon scriptural. It did so indeed, but it had great disadvantages. The nexus between the texts was factitious; often refined and recondite; and always more obvious to the writer than it could be to the reader. It prevented the flow of thought in a natural channel. It was like a number of lakes connected by artificial canals as compared with a flowing natural stream. The discourse was disjointed, and overladen with texts, and uninteresting. I am convinced that those passages of Scripture which suggest themselves unsought in rapid writing or speaking are the most effective; nay, that

one such is worth a hundred lugged in collo obtorto. To be scriptural in preaching we must be familiar with the Bible at common times. Hence one of the great advantages of preaching without notes, even in regard to method. Such is the sympathy between soul and soul, that a connection of thoughts which is easy, agreeable, and awakening to the hearer, will always be found to be that which has been natural and unconstrained in the mind of the preacher. The best way is to study the parallel places exegetically, perhaps as they lie in the Scripture, and then to let them come in or not as they may suggest themselves during preparation.

The Power of the Pulpit.-I fear none of us apprehend as we ought to do the value of the preacher's office. Our young men do not gird themselves for it with the spirit of those who are on the eve of a great conflict; nor do they prepare as those who are to lay their hands upon the springs of the mightiest passions, and stir up to their depths the ocean of human feelings. Where this estimate of the work prevails, men even of inferior training accomplish much; such as Summerfield, and even The pulpit will still remain the grand means of affecting the mass of men. It is God's own method, and he will honour it. The work done by Wesley and by Whitefield, and by Christmas Evans in Wales, could not have been accomplished by any other human agency-the press, for instance. In every age, great reformers have been great preachers; and even in the corrupt Roman Church, the most wonderful effects have been produced by preaching. Bourdaloue and Massillon were successively brought to Paris from the provinces; and when the former, late in life, most pathetically entreated that he might go into retirement, and at first was gratified, his Jesuit supe riors used means with the Pope to have him restored to th metropolis. Dr. Alexander.

BRIEF NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Specially adapted to interest and benefit thoughtful young men.

The Immortal Theme.

By J. ASHWORTH. Second edition, enlarged and revised. London W. Lister. We are happy to find that this little work, of which we have previously given a favourable opinion, has reached a second edition. "In this edition the author has made several alterations and improvements, besides adding two additional chapters to the work," thus rendering it still more worthy of public patronage. Dealing exclusively with the central truths of the Gospel, and written in a strong, impassioned, unctuous style, this book cannot but be productive of good."