because they do not "strike while the iron is hot." More than half a minister's usefulness depends upon the weekly adaptation of his sermons to the state and wants of his people. It is easier to write such sermons than any other, because you then have a definite object. They are more interesting than any other, because they come more directly home to men's business and bosoms. They are more highly prized and better remembered, though in the abstract they may not be so able. The same discourse will be listened to with the most profound attention at one time, which would put half the audience to sleep at another. You can hardly spend too much thought, then, upon the choice of subjects.

Never, my dear E., begin a sermon without prayer, nor think of finishing it, without frequently lifting up your heart to God for the teaching of his spirit. If we are not "sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves," even in the discharge of our ordinary christian duties, how much more do we need divine help and illumination, in preparing to come before our dying fellow sinners as the messengers of the Lord of Hosts. I fear there are a great many finely written and popular sermons brought out of the study every sabbath day, without a word of prayer. If they do no good, can it be wondered at? In whose strength were they prepared? More prayer and less polish would be infinitely more effectual, than the most labored argumentation, or the most eloquent appeals, without prayer. The immortal Luther never uttered a truer sentiment than Bene orasse est bene precasse.

In writing your sermons, you can either make what is called a first draft, as a guide to careful rewriting, or you can write upon loose sheets, so as to throw out now and then a leaf, when it does not suit you, or you can fold and stitch the sheets together, before you put pen to paper, so as to make the first the only draft. I have tried each of these methods, and am prepared to express my decided preference for the last. If you depend upon a second draft, you will find it impossible to lay out your whole strength upon the first; for you will be all the while thinking, "though this and the other sentence, or paragraph is not just right, I will make it better next time." The habit of re-writing, will cost you much more time and manual labor, without any adequate compensation. Doing about half as well as you can upon the first draft, and about the same upon the next, is by no means equivalent to girding up your mind to the work, and finishing the discourse at once. It does not hold true here, that two halves are whole. The same objection, as I have found by experience, lies in some degree against loose sheets. If you make your calculation before hand, to throw out now and then a leaf, you will of course have occasion to do it; whereas, if you stitch your blank book and determine neither to re-write nor reject a single page, you will also make up your mind to do your best; and in this way you will form the habit of careful and accurate composition, which will be of the greatest advantage to you in after life.

equal to one

You will not understand me as objecting to your copying for the press, if you should ever publish any

of your sermons, nor as intending to dissuade you from a careful revision of them, from time to time, whether you ever allow any of them to appear in print, or not. On the contrary, I regard re-writing as a very useful and necessary exercise, where any one aims at a high degree of accuracy, force or elegance in his style. I hope if you should live to be sixty, you will be able to show a great many discourses, that have been written over three or four times. My advice not to depend at all on copying relates to your ordinary weekly preparations. Write every sermon as well as you can for present use, and then you will have many that are worth revising, but not otherwise. Some that are carelessly put together may possibly answer to make over, but it will generally cost you more trouble than to make new ones.

I would advise you, always before you enter upon the body of a discourse, to prepare a skeleton or well digested outline. This you may commit to writing, or carry along in your memory. The former method I think is the best. You will then have it in "black and white" before your eyes for a guide. Your Professors in the Seminary have told you, and told you truly, that you can hardly take too much pains in drawing out and wording the heads of a discourse. A good skeleton is more than half the sermon; and to be a good one, it must be definite, concise, logical and perspicuous. It must have unity, compactness and symmetry-bones, ligaments and just proportions. I intend to give you, in a future letter, some admirable specimens, from the sermons of a venerable living preacher.

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But you must not misunderstand me here. far from recommending a mechanical uniformity in plans of sermons-just so many heads in the main body of every discourse, and then about the same number of inferences and remarks at the close. I should be sorry to have any of your stated hearers able to predict upon a wager, before you name your text, that you will have just so many divisions and subdivisions, let the subject be what it may. Variety is pleasing in everything, and not less so in the frame work of sermons, than elsewhere. We do not like to see the same guideboards everywhere, with the same lettering, and just the same distance apart, whatever path we take and which way soever we travel. Some texts require more divisions than others. You should consider well what you want to prove, or illustrate, or enforce, and follow nature, or rather I ought to say, follow the indications and leadings of the Holy Spirit, as far as possible, in the arrangement of your thoughts and arguments.

Make your own skeletons. I would not have you own Simeon, or any other work like it, for thrice its cost. It is unnatural, it is awkward to build upon another's foundation. It is patch work. You cannot get into the subject. You are in leading strings, and feel all the while that you have not the free and proper use of your own faculties. With your utmost pains to put on the muscles and fill out the skeleton, ten to one, it will be a lean affair after all. You can doubtless find a thousand plans of sermons better than you can make yourself; I mean, better in the abstract, or in the rhetorical class room, but not bet

ter for you. When you think out your plan for yourself, it has at least one good thing to recommend it, it is your own. And the longer you rely on your own invention, the better you will succeed. Besides, in making your plan, you unconsciously make the best part of the sermon. When you get through, they are one and indivisible. And however disadvantageously your skeleton may compare with some other from the same text, in nineteen cases out of twenty, your sermon, as a whole, will be better than if you had borrowed from your neighbor, or from the most distinguished sermonizer of the age.

A good deal has been said against the formal announcement of distinct heads or divisions in preaching; but it does not appear to me, that there is very much weight in any of the objections which I have heard. It cannot indeed be denied, that some of the old divines, particularly the Non-conformists of the seventeenth century, carried the system of notation to an extravagant and bewildering extreme. But few of their hearers, I am sure, could have had sufficient room in their memories for so many figures. If I remember right, I once counted about two hundred divisions and subdivisions, in a sermon of Dr. Charnock; and in that sermon, or another by the same distinguished author, I think you will find fifteen divisions distinctly marked off by figures, before he states his doctrine. Now all will agree that that this is absurd. It defeats the great object of notation, which is that the plan of the discourse may be more easily remembered. But the objection lies against the abuse only of the system. It does not