PREACHING
WITHOUT NOTES
A SERIES OF LECTURES
BY
RICHARD S. STORRS, D.D., LL.D.
HODDER & STOUGHTON
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




Ent'red according to Act of Congri, in the year 1875, by
DODD AND MEAD,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




CONTENTS.
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FIRsr LCrUJ.....  a   z.                      9
SECOND LECT........ 70
TXRD Lzcmrzu.. 131
APPENDIX.... ~...2








PREFATORY NOTEK
IN marking out the course of thought to be put
sued in the following lectures the writer of this note
had no more intention of preparing a volume, however slight, on the best method of preaching the
Gospel, than he had of composing a treatise on
Ethics, or an essay on Fine Art. His only design
was, in compliance with the invitation of the honored President and Faculty of the Union Theological Seminary, to say some words to the students
of that institution, especially to those of the senior
class, on his own experience in preaching without
notes, and on the lessons which this had taught him
as to the most effective mode of preparing for
the work.
The one lecture which at first was contemplated
grew into three; and if the three had been multias




6             PREFATORY NOTE.
plied by three, the subject would have remained
inadequately treated. It was not till after the first
of them had been delivered that the lecturer was
advised, by the present publisher, that arrangements
had been made for fully reporting them, and that,
unless positive objection were made, they would be
printed. Certainly no book was ever made, therefore, with less of pre-determination on the part of
the author.
It seems only reasonable to ask that any one into
whose hands the book may fall will remember the
way in which it came to exist, and will not expect
from it something more and other than it seeks to
supply. The lectures were spoken, without having
been written; and the author would not have felt at
liberty to recast them, even if he had had the leisure
for the work. Here and there a phrase or a sentence
has been changed; a word has occasionally been
substituted for another, when that selected at the
instant of speaking seemed not the best as more
quietly reviewed; and in one instance an unimportant paragraph has been transferred from one part
of a lecture to another more fitting. Otherwise, the




PREFATORY NOTE.              7
lectures are printed as delivered, — this being the
wish of all concerned with them.
The style of them is, therefore, so entirely without
the elaboration in which authors delight that if
pride of authorship alone were to be consulted they
certainly would not now be published.  But the
thoughts expressed in them are such as had commended themselves to the lecturer, in his own ministerial life and work, and such as he therefore had
no hesitation in presenting to others, in the form
of free and familiar discourse. He does not now
shrink from presenting them to the public, though
quite aware how slight is their claim to any general
attention, and how different would have been the
form to be given them if he had contemplated
making a book.
They are published, at the expressed desire of
some who had heard them, and of more who had
not; in the hope that, with all their obvious imperfections, they may contribute something, of encouragement if not of more special assistance, to those
who would speak the unchanging truth with which
God crowds and crowns the Gospel, out of a fur.




8            PREFATORY NOTE.
nished and quickening mind, without that perpetual
bondage to the pen which presses heavily on many
ministers.
RIcuKiD S. STORe
BROOKLYN, February IS 187S.




FIRST LECTURE.
Ar. President: Young Gentlemen:There will be no misunderstanding between
us, I presume, as to my general purpose and
plan in coming hither, or in what I am to say
to you, now and hereafter. I do not come, of
course, to deliver systematic and elaborate lectures, on the subject upon which I. am to speak.
You have Professors to do that; with leisure,
skill, and an aptness for the office, which I do
not possess; and I should only be intruding
myself upon their function, without invitation
and without warrant, if I were to attempt any
thing of the kind. I have come simply to talk
to you a little, in a familiar way, of the conditions of success in preaching without notes;
and to offer some thoughts, concerning these




10      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
conditions, which are suggested to me by my
own experience.
I have thought, in looking back on my Seminary course, that I should have been glad if
some one who had entered the ministry before
me had then told me, frankly and fully, as I
hope to tell you, what he had learned by any
efforts which he had made in this direction. So
I have cheerfully accepted the invitation to do
for you what I see I should have been glad to
have had some one else then do for me.
I am somewhat abashed, I confess, at finding
so many present whom I have not come prepared
to address: Professors, Secretaries, Clergymen,
Lawyers, Editors, and others — many of them
masters of every art and power of eloquence, as
I am not, and far better qualified to instruct me
on the subject than I am to give suggestions
to them. But I shall not be diverted from the
one purpose which has brought me hither - to
talk familiarly and freely to you. If what I am
to say shall seem common-place, as very likely




LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE.       II
it will, to these gentlemen whose presence I did
not anticipate, I can only remind them that they
are not here at my invitation, and that if they
choose to take part of their purgatory in this
life, and in this particular fashion, we cannot
object. But I have only you to speak to; and
shall not turn aside to consider whether that
which is in my mind is, or is not, what they
have come to hear.
As I said, the suggestions which I make will
be largely those derived from my personal experience. I do not know that you will find much
profit in them, for I remember the remark of
Coleridge that'experience is like the stern-light
of a ship at sea: it enlightens only the track
which has been passed over.' There are such
differences between men, in temperament, habit,
mental constitution, the natural and customary
methods of work, that the experience of one may
not suggest much of value to another, anci I
shall not be disappointed if mine is not very ser.
viceable to you. Indeed this matter of speak.




12      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
ing freely to a public assembly, without notes, is
eminently one in regard to which every man
must learn for himself; and no one can make
his own method a rule for another, unless he can
simultaneously exchange minds with him —a
thing which in our case would be neither possible for me, nor perhaps profitable for you.
Still: the rules which experience suggests are
likely to be better than those which theorists
elaborate in their libraries; and I have got
more help myself from hints of others, working
in the same direction, than from any discussions
in learned treatises. So I shall give you what I
can, and' hope for the best; and if any thing
which I may say shall prove to be of service to
you, I shall be amply rewarded for the work.
To lay the foundation for my remarks I will
state rapidly what my experience in the matter
has been.
I was in part educated for the bar; and was
at one time quite familiar with the Boston courtrooms, at a period when the Suffolk-bar was at




THE SUFFOLK BAR.           13
the height of its power and fame. Mr. Webster
was there, in the intervals between the sessions
of the Senate, in the maturity and splendor of
his majestic intelligence. Mr. Choate was there
- under whose direction I was prosecuting my
studies -whose genius seemed an oriental exotic,
brilliant, luxuriant, among the common ferns
and brake of New England. Mr. Benjamin R.
Curtis was there, — recently deceased, then in
the prinme of his force and his career, —whose
power of perspicuous and persuasive legal statement surpassed that, I think, of any speaker
whom I have since anywhere heard.  With
these were associated others, not so prominent
then or since before the public, but only second
to them in faculty and in training.
All these men, of course, were in the habit of
speaking constantly, without notes, before the
full Bench, or to the Jury; in the most important and difficult cases, as well as in those of
lighter consequence; when arguing difficult
questions of law, as well as when discussing an




14      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
issue of facts. I never knew but one lawyer
who was in the habit of reading his arguments
from a full manuscript; and he, though an able,
was a remarkably timid man, whose argument
was always addressed to the Judge, not to the
Jury.
I could not see, therefore, why a ministerhowever limited in faculty and in culture, in
comparison certainly with these eminent men --
should not do that before his congregation, which
lawyers were doing all the time in the courts;
and when my plans of life were changed, under
the impulse as I thought of God's Spirit, and I
had devoted myself to the ministry, I determined
if possible to fit myself to do this, and to preach
without reading. It seemed to me that this was
the more apostolic way, at least. I could not
learn that Paul pulled out a Greek manuscript,
and undertook to read it with his infirm eyes,
when he addressed the woman at Philippi; or
even when he spoke on Mars Hill, under the
shadow of the Propylea and the Parthenon, to the




TRAINING IN THE SEMINARY.      I5
critical Athenians. It seemed to me that to
speak to men without notes, out of a full and earnest mind, was now as then the most natural and
effective way to address them; the way most fitting to those sublime and practical themes which
the preacher of the Gospel has to present, and to
the interests, so immensely important, which he
is to subserve. And I was distinctly and deliberately determined, if it was in my power to
accomplish it, to learn to speak thus, and not to
either read my sermons, or write them out and
commit them to memory.
Accordingly, I did some training for this in
my Seminary course; but it was not much, nor
was it particularly fruitful of good. I presume
that you are here encouraged in such efforts,
guided, and stimulated. I presume the students
at Andover are so now, under the present regime.
But in my time there - as some of these gentlemen present will remember, who were there with
me -- such a method of preaching was not looked
upon with particular favor. The atmosphere of




i6      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
the Seminary was not friendly or helpful to it. It
was about as trying an ordeal as a man can well
pass to stand up and speak without a manuscript,
in the lecture-room or the chapel. I don't know
that the criticism which was encountered was
any more severe than it should have been. I
am sure it was never intentionally oppressive or
unjust. But it was most thoroughly searching
and exact; so that if a man had any weaknesses
or faults about him, as all of us had, he was
sure enough to find them out, and was usually
glad, after one experiment, to take refuge in
future behind his notes.
I got some practice in the debating society;
and two or three times, as I remember, adventured upon short public speeches, without notes
in my pocket. But on the whole I lost rather
than gained, in this regard, in my Seminary
course; and when I came out was hardly as
eager, perhaps, so far as courage and confidence
were concerned, was hardly as well fitted, to
preach without notes as I should have been ear.




SETTLEMENT AT BROOKLINE.        17
Tier. My conviction on the subject remained,
however; and I was still resolved to get used to
this method, and to employ it, if I could.
My first settlement in the ministry was at
Brookline, near Boston; in a charming suburban
parish, but with a congregation not helpful to my
plans in regard to this matter of the method
of preaching. In a church capable of holding
five hundred or six hundred people we had usually, in the winter, a congregation of perhaps
seventy-five to a hundred. They were as affectionate and appreciative hearers as any man need
ask or hope for. But the majority of them were
cultured, careful, critical hearers, who required a
high intellectual tone in whatever was said to
them, and were instantly sensitive to its absence.
They had been trained under the Boston pulpits, the ministers in which almost universally —
perhaps quite universally —then read their sermons; and, though kind as they could be, they
were inevitably exacting in their demand for precision and elegance of literary form. It was a




I8      PREACH ING WITHOUT NOTES.
scattered assembly, of individuals, and of sepa.
rated households. There was no mass of hearers,
to be kindled and swayed by a common enthu.
siasm, and in turn to react upon the preacher:
they were not numerous enough for that, and the
building itself was relatively too large. They
were most of them, of course, older than I was,
and I was diffident in speaking before them on
subjects much longer familiar to them than they
had been to me. They were more or less
anxious, too, as to the impression to be made by
my preaching on the Unitarian or Episcopalian
outsiders who frequently made a part of the congregation; and so were uneasy and apprehensive
when I rose without notes, and jubilant whenever
they saw these before me.
I made my endeavors, more than once, to carry
out the plan which I had proposed, and preach
without a manuscript before me; but it was all
the time like swimming up the rapids, while with
the manuscript I had only to float easily on the
current. I tried to combine the advantages of




USE OF A SKELETON.          19
both methods: to have notes before me, a somewhat full skeleton of my discourse, and then to
be at liberty, in the intervals between the heads
and sub-heads, to avail myself of any suggestions
that might come. But this plan I found, for me
— however it may be for others - the poorest
possible. I lost all fluency, and continuity of
thought. The intervals were not long enough,
between my prepared heads, to allow the mind
to get freely, freshly, vigorously at work. Just
as my mental glow began, if it did begin, it had
to be checked by returning to the manuscript.
My utterance was inevitably interrupted, suspended, at the moment at which it might otherwise have come to be easy and spontaneous. I
could never get force enough, between the recurring references to my notes, to push the sermon
home upon my hearers, or even to carry my own
mind through it with any sense of liberty and
vigor. The whole sermon became a series of
jerks. There was no gathered and helpful mo.
mentum, toward the end, or anywhere else. I




20      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
lost the foresight of the end from the beginning;
was wholly engrossed in taking each successive
step correctly, when I should come to it. I
became timid, retrospective, and had no sense of
real mastery over the theme, or of any mastery
whatever over the minds to which I was speaking.
So I gave up that plan, then and there, and
have never once thought of trying it since. It
would be to me like running a race, with a ball
and chain attached to each foot. I should read
every sermon I ever preached, if that were to
be the only alternative.
During the year which I spent at Brookline, I
persevered in these efforts to get free from
necessary dependence on my notes; but I do
not think that I ever once, in the pulpit there,
on the Sunday, had any true sense of liberty and
joy in public utterance, unless I was reading.
It was a steady hard struggle, from first to last,
for conscious freedom in public speech; with
almost no sense of success, and with very little




FIRST SERMON AT BROOKLYN.     21
reward, except as my will got hardened by it. I
don't know whether I should have kept on or
not, if I had stayed there longer.
It so happened that the first sermon which I
ever preached at Brooklyn - the only one,
indeed, which I ever preached there before
being called to the Church of the Pilgrims —
was preached without notes.  I was called
upon unexpectedly for the service, as I was
passing through the city, and when I had with
me no manuscript sermons. But I had a subject
in mind on which I had written not long before,
in which I had been at the time much interested, and of which I had made a thorough
analysis. The course of thought pursued in
the sermon was fresh in my mind, though the
notes were not with me. I preached in a lecture-room, which was wholly filled with attentive
hearers. I had no sort of fear of the congregation, which was entirely made up of strangers
to me; and I found as I went on, in the treatraent of the subject with which I had made




22      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
myself previously familiar, that the mind worked
with a facility, a force, a sense of exhilaration,
which I never had had in reading from a manuscript. I enjoyed the service, and had a certain
sense of Christian success in it. The people
were interested; and their interest had an instant reflex influence upon my own mind, so that
the success became duplicated. It seemed to
me, at the end, that it must be always easy and
pleasant, under similar conditions, to repeat that
experiment.
When, therefore, I was called to that church,
and had decided to go there, I was fully determined to carry out this plan of preaching without notes, occasionally at least, at all hazards. I
was twenty-five years old, and thought I knew
something:-as men are apt to think, at that
time of life. I had had a year's practice in the
pulpit, such as it was, and had gained some freedom and confidence from it. The congregation
at Brooklyn was certainly larger than the one to
which I had ministered before, and it seemed to




SERMON AFTER INSTALLATION.       23
me likely to be more sympathetic with a freer
tone and style of speech. I was more certain
than ever that I should find relief and help in
my preferred method of preaching, if I could
master it; and I was resolved to master it, if
the thing could be done.
So the first sermon which I preached, after
my Installation, was preached without notes. It
was very nearly a dead failure. It was an absolute failure, so far as any sense of liberty on
my part, or any useful effect on the people, was
concerned. I have the notes of it still; and not
long ago, in looking over old papers, I happened
upon these, and read them over. I saw at a
glance what the secret of the failure had been.
I had made too much preparation in detail; had
written out heads, sub-divisions, even some passages or paragraphs in full, in order that I might
be certain beforehand to have material enough
at command; and the result of it was that I was
all the time looking backward, not forward, in
preaching; trying to remember, not only pre



24      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
arranged trains of thought but particular forms
of expression, instead of trusting to the impulse
of the subject, and seeking to impress certain
great and principal features of it on the congre.
gation.
My verbal memory has always been the
weakest part of my mental organization. I
hardly dare trust myself now to quote a sentence from any writer, without having it before
me in manuscript. I had wholly overloaded this
verbal memory, in my preparation for the service; and the inevitable consequence was that
it and I staggered along together, for perhaps
twenty-five minutes, and then stopped. I sank
back on the chair, almost wishing that I had been
with Pharaoh and his hosts when the Red Sea
went over them! The people were disappointed, and I -vas nearly sick. I am quite
certain that if the proposal to invite me to
Brooklyn had been made subsequently to that,
instead of before it, I never should have been
called to that congregation! I went back to the




LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.       25
reading of manuscript sermons, and doubted for
a good while if I should ever again try another
method. I could not hazard another mortification so keen as that, or another failure so complete.
However, after a time, the old feeling revived,
and it seemed a shame to give it up so. I
always preached my weekly lectures without
notes, or with only brief ones; and that helped
and encouraged me to again try it in the
church, as swimming in the pond helps one byand-by to swim out fearlessly in the open sea
I was in the habit, too, of making occasional
addresses, as other clergymen did, on public
anniversary occasions; and in giving these, as
we always did, without notes, it was continually anew impressed upon me that it must be
possible to do the same in the pulpit, and that
there would come with it a certain increase of
independence and of power.
I remember an occasion, for example- it
must have been twenty-four or five years ago




:26     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
in the old Broadway Tabernacle, at an anni
versary of the Bible Society, when I had a
conscious pleasure and freedom in speaking, an
invigoration of mind in the very process of speaking, which reading from a manuscript never had
given. The subject was one familiar to me,
through my connection at that time with the
Committee of Versions. The occasion was an
important one: the assembly was very large,
crowding the platform, filling the house, abso.
lutely. It was a responsive, sympathetic assembly, full of a diffused enthusiasm which attracted and rewarded whatever was said that
was worth being heard. There was a pull from
without, as well as an incessant push from
within. The audience and the speaker reacted
on each other. A man could hardly help speaking easily, joyfully, in such surroundings; and I
wished afterward, oftentimes, that the same experience which one now and then thus gained
upon the platform could be transferred to the
pulpit,/and could there become customary.




RELIGIOUS INTEREST HELPFUL.    27
After a time there came a growing religious
interest, working and widening throughout the
congregation; and that helped greatly to preach
without a manuscript. The people were more
moved by the more direct address, and welcomed it eagerly. My own mind was more quick
with a vivid realization of the meaning and the
importance of the Divine message. It acted
more ardently and intensely upon subjects, and
found it more natural to speak of these in words
which had not been prearranged by the pen.
Preacher and people were all lifted by the
impulse, as the steamship is carried over the
bar by the swelling tide which imperceptibly
swings it upward. They were more sympathetic; I was more strongly moved by my subjects, and more intent on practical results: and
so I began to get hold of them, at last, in this
mode of preaching. Individuals would now and
then tell me of impressions made on them, or
on their friends, of helps given, of new thoughts
started, of words that had become warnings or




28      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
motives; and more frequently than not these
had come from sermons unwritten. So, though
far from feeling at ease, as an habitual thing,
when I entered the pulpit without my notes, I
had an occasional sense of success in dispensing
with them, and began to do it with more and
more of facility and of confidence.
When I speak of "success," Gentlemen, you
will of course understand me as speaking only
of relative success; of success, as compared with
previous failure. Nobody can be more perfectly
aware than I am that in no other than this limited and personal sense have I ever reached
"success;" and there seems a certain unwarrantable assumption in my speaking to you of its
conditions. But the navigator may know the
route which must be taken to reach the North
Pole, though he himself has never been there;
and so I think that I have learned what are the
necessary conditions of a success which is far
enough from my attainment.
I used now and then, at the time I refer to, to




CONTINUING EMBARRASSMENT.       29
have this occasional, partial sense, of a relative
success, in preaching without notes.
But I was still always embarrassed by a
degree of uncertainty as to how far I should be
able in the pulpit to develop my subject; and
the amount of the previous preparation which
I had made appeared to give no measure and no
prophecy of the freedom in preaching which I
should enjoy. In fact, the two seemed often to
stand in an inverse ratio; so that the more ample
the preparation, the more meagre and unsatis.
factory might be the discourse. I almost always
approached the service, therefore, with a distinct
timidity; and was careful to preach without
notes in the morning, if at all, when I had most
of freshness and strength, and when I knew of
the written sermon held in reserve, on which I
could fall back for the second service, — thus
redeeming in part any special failure which the
morning might witness.
This went on for a number of years; till at
last, a dozen years ago or so, after I had been in




q0      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
Brooklyn for sixteen or seventeen years, I began
to feel that growing sense of the oppressiveness
of routine, and that teasing desire for a change
of field, which almost every minister feels after
many years of continuous service in the same
parish. It seemed to me that the people were
getting so accustomed to my ways of conceiving
and presenting truth that they were now insensitive to them; and that some decided change
in the teaching mind would be to them of service. But that was not the worst of it. I felt
myself getting into ruts, in regard to my method
of treating subjects, my modes of argument,
expression, illustration. It seemed to me that
the mind itself was in danger of drying up; that
it needed a decided and positive change, to give
it impulse, vivacity, flexibility, and to prevent it
from becoming rigid and narrow. In other
words, I was growing restless; and was nearly
persuaded that the people would be better for a
new mind in the pulpit, and that I should be
better for another field of labor. If it had been




NEED OF SOME CHANGE.         31
easy and right for me to leave my parish, and
take another, I should almost certainly then have
done so.  But in the existing circumstances
of my church I did not feel at liberty to leave
it; and the case was one of those in regard to
which one has to consider, you know, what Professor Stuart used to call the terminus ad quem as
well as the terminus a quo. So, as I had neither
liberty to leave, nor any special invitation to go
elsewhere, it seemed plainly my duty to stay
where I was, and to find some other way of overcoming the tendencies which had begun to
embarrass me.
The only way that I could think of was to
make a decided change in my method of working; to do thenceforth habitually, what until
then I had done only occasionally; and to make
it thereafter my principal aim, in my public ministry, to present subjects to the congregation
without immediate help from a manuscript.
This involved important changes in my whole
way of working, both before preaching, and in it;




32      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
and I thought might have the effect which I
desired, on the people, and on myself.
I communicated my purpose, privately, to a
number of the principal members of the con.
gregation, and gave them my reasons for it.
They were abundantly satisfied with the decision. It came to be generally understood, before long, that a written sermon was never to
be expected in the morning; and after that I
was not embarrassed by any surprise on the part
of my hearers when they saw me open the Bible,
and begin the discourse, without paper before
me. I still wrote for the evening-service; but
that gradually became less important in comparison with the morning, and the far larger
part of my time and force was given to the
sermon which was to be preached without a
manuscript.
From that time I had more and more 3{
facility and freedom in preaching in this way.
The people became accustomed to it, and most
of them preferred it. Those who came later




ACADEMY OF MUSIC.           33
into the congregation, found me established in
the practice, and expected nothing else. And
so that method was finally fixed, for one service
on every Sunday.
After a number of years of this practice, in
I869, while our church-edifice was being reconstructed, my congregation was thrown for many
months into the Academy of Music for its place
of worship. The seats there were all free; and
the assemblies, gathered from all parts of the
town, especially in the evening, were large and
very miscellaneous. One of the Professors in the
Divinity School at Cambridge, who was remonstrated with for leaving his chair of theological
instruction in order to take a seat in Congress,
is said to have replied, that perhaps the objector
was not quite aware what the extent of his opportunity was as a teacher of theology.' There
were indeed three men in his class: one of them
was a sceptic, one a dyspeptic, and the third a
Swedenborgian.' Well, I had all these, and a great
many of other sqrts and conditions, from the




34      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
most devout and intelligent of worshippers to
the most entirely indifferent and careless, with
a larger proportion of unbelievers than is commonly to be found in a Sunday congregation.
It was simply idle to try to hold the attention
of an audience so various, promiscuous, and untrained as that, while reading from a manuscript.
Numbers of them would have laughed in my
face, and have left the house. Certainly, they
would never have come a second time. Inserting a manuscript between them and myself,
would have been like cutting the telegraph-wires,
and putting a sheet of paper into the gap. See
if you then can send your message on the wire!
The electricity would not pass. So I gave up
the manuscript on the spot, the first night, and
preached thenceforth both morning and evening without any notes. I have never written
but one sermon since; and that was for a special
occasion, outside altogether of my own congregation.
It is an entire mistake to suppose, as some




FAILURE OF HEALTH.          35
have done, that I broke down in health in consequence of this change, or in consequence of
the new work in the Academy, and of the strain
which came with it. That was due wholly to
other causes, and many things contributed to it.
I had been preaching for twenty-five years, with
only the brief summer-vacations in all that time.
I had had a large, an always increasing, pastoral
work. For thirteen years I had been one of the
editors of a leading religious newspaper. I had
for many of those years been in the habit of lecturing often, during the winter. I had freely
accepted public responsibilities, some of which
brought much labor with them, in the city which
I live in. I was nearly at the end of all my
resources, of strength and nerve-force, when
we began reconstructing the church; and that
brought with it its own anxieties and burdensome
cares. During the winter at the Academy I had
a succession of prostrating colds, which left me
at last at a very low point of vital energy. In
the summer which followed, after we had re.




36      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
turned to the church, I was visited with sudden
and heavy domestic grief, from whose shock and
shadow I could not rally. I was simply worn out,
with severe, long-protracted, unremitting hard
work; and I then did, what I should have done
years before, except for my father's advanced
age, and my desire to be near him —I went to
Europe, for a year and more, to let the exhausted
forces rally, and give nature a chance to restore
the excessive vital waste.
I returned from Europe refreshed, as I had
hoped, in body and in mind, and resumed my
work according to the method which I have described; and have maintained it, as I said, ever
since. Instead of breaking me down, it had
enabled me, I am certain, to go on at least a year
or two longer than I otherwise could have done;
and neither the people nor I had the least desire
for any change in it. I shall certainly never
depart from it hereafter, while I continue to
preach at all.
I am afraid, Gentlemen, that you will think I




TWO METHODS CONTRASTED.        37
have dwelt too long on this common-place
experience of mine; but I have been asked to
give you such suggestions as grow out of this,
and so it seemed needful to tell you at the outset
just what it had been. It is very unimportant,
except as it gives me a certain right, perhaps, to
speak of the relative advantages of the two
modes of preaching — with notes, and without
them. I hope I have not seemed egotistical in
it, for my only desire is to serve and help you;
and for that purpose, only, I have delayed upon
the matter. I wrote for many years, fully, and
carefully. I now write only a brief outline of the
discourse, covering usually one or two sheets of
common note-paper, and have no notes before
me in the pulpit - not a line, or a catch-word.
So I think I know how the one method operates,
and how the other, on both preacher and people;
and I see —certainly more clearly than I used
to-what is necessary to one's success if he
would address a public assembly without committing to memory what he says, and without




38      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
aid from present notes. The ideal of that success we may none of us realize. But I think
we may all of us make some approach to it, if
we earnestly try.
Now for some general suggestions, growing
out of this experience, which I shall present as
preliminary to others, more detailed and specific,
that I design to offer hereafter.
FIRST, let me say: Never begin to preach without notes with any idea of saving yourselves
work by it. - If you do, you will fail; and you
will richly deserve to fail. Any suspicion of this
among your people will destroy your hold on
them. Your own minds will deteriorate; and
your sermons will lose, not finish only, but body
and vigor.
Of course there is a certain amount of nervous
fatigue connected with the compulsory use of
the pen —especially of a steel-pen, a gold-pen,
or any other with an inflexible handle - which is
saved when a man only writes as he feels like it,
and not under pressure: and this is an impor



THOUGHTS AT ODD MOMENTS.        39
tant gain to one wbho has been emancipated from
notes. There is a gain in release from confining
desk-work, and from constant bondage to prescribed hours. A man who writes his sermons
fully sometimes becomes so wearied with the
intent application of eye and hand, while making the manuscript, that he hardly can rally to
deliver the sermon with as much of glow as he
gave it in writing. One who trains his mind to
work without the pen finds, after a while, that he
can meditate his discourses while he is walking;
while he is doing errands; while he is sitting in
the parlor, waiting for the friend on whom he
is calling. The whole plan of a sermon will
sometimes shape itself suddenly in his mind.
Thoughts come to him more and more freely, al
odd moments; and sometimes these are the best
he gets, as Goethe said that his best thoughts
came:'like singing birds, the free children of
God, crying'here we are!'' Of course this is
not confined to one who preaches without notes.
It is true also of one who is closely engaged in




40      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
preparing a manuscript. But I think this habit
of mind is more common where one meditates
subjects without dependence on pencil or pen.
Certainly I know that such thoughts now come
to me oftener than they did when I always had a
manuscript lying in the study, impatient to be
finished.*
But, on the other hand, whatever of time and
of force is saved, in these ways or in others,
must only be more carefully devoted to the complete conscious mastery of the subject which one
intends to present, if he is to speak without notes;
so that he knows it thoroughly, has searched it
through, is vitally charged with it, and has it
fully and vividly in mind. This is absolutely indispensable to any real success in presenting it
to others; and this implies a concentrated, continuous, intense action of your mind upon it, -
more so, I think, than you would ordinarily give if
writing upon it. One does not usually, I suspect,
get his whole plan, in all its bearings, fully in
* Note I.




MORE VITAL FORCE EXPENDED.    41
mind, before the process of writing begins. But
he mnust do this before he speaks, if he is to
speak with any proper success.
Then, for a long time, one must expect a
degree of mental excitement, and of consequent
mental exhaustion, in uttering his sermon, when
preaching without notes, which does not attend
the reading of a manuscript. At the outset, at
any rate, the reader has much the easier task in
the matter of delivery. Having read his sermon,
of thirty-five or forty minutes, he is generally
fresh enough to read it again, if there were occasion. It is far more exhausting to speak the same
thoughts, with no notes before you. Much more
of vital force goes out, in the rapid and continuing
action of all your powers on what you are saying.
But, remember, that here is a recompense as well
as a demand. For this essential vital force, going
forth on one's speech, is that which makes words
life and spirit. It is, under God, the converting
force, which quickens, sways, inspires those to
whom it is sent, as thought alone can never do




42      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
It is the power which God employs as His great
moral instrument in the world.
Such abundant and careful preliminary preparation, and such a vital absorption of the mind
in the subject while preaching, are needed to
conciliate the attention, the respect, the confidence of your hearers. They will be repulsed,
and with reason, you will lose all your hold on
them —they will swiftly antagonize you, with
indifference or hostility -if they come to suspect that you are simply shirking labor in
preaching without writing.  This is in fact
one chief reason, their suspicion of this, why
people are often uneasy and restless under
such preaching. My father was a clergyman
of the old school, accustomed always to write
for the pulpit with studious care.  He was
ready, free, eloquent in speech, in the lectureroom, or on the platform. Some of the most
stirring and animating addresses that I ever
heard from human lips I have heard from him,
in small assemblies, on special occasions. But I




"BEATEN OIL."            43
think that to the end of his life he always wrote
every word of all his sermons; and, for a long
time, he looked with great distrust on my preferred method of preaching. One of his remarki
was, frequently repeated: "My son, I was early
taught that I must bring beaten oil into the
sanctuary;" and I never could persuade him that
there was any better way of beating it than by
using a pen for a spoon! So, for years, after I
was much in the habit of preaching without notes
at home, I always carried written sermons to
Braintree, and read them, as well as I could, in
his pulpit.
It happened, however, on a special occa.
sion, that he was very desirous that I should
preach when I had no manuscript with me. I
was obliged to take, therefore, the same method
to which I had been accustomed at home; and
having, as far as I could, charged my mind with
the subject, I spoke without notes. After that,
he would never let me do any thing else, when I
Preached for him. He saw that the subject had




44      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
been carefully considered; that the sermon was
not being hastily manufactured, on the spot, but
was the result of serious preceding reflection
and study: and that was all that he needed to
know. Then, he yielded to the influence of the
freer and more forceful spontaneous utterance,
and even regretted that he had not himself
adopted the same method, earlier in life. So,
you see, Gentlemen, I have made at least one
convert!
Such persistent and strenuous mental exertion on your subjects is needful, too, to your own
mind, to discipline, widen, invigorate that, and
make it fit to master themes, and speak to men.
Whoever has thoroughly mastered one subject,
will thereby be fitted to grapple others: but a
kind of general mental flabbiness is the sure rcsult of any let-up from austere and exacting menltal discipline. Never suffer yourselves, there
fore, to speak, as Strafford said,' from the teeth,
outward.' Your speech will certainly become
stale, flat, and unprofitable if you do. Conceive




HABIT OF WRITING.         45
your subject clearly, get hold of it firmly, let
your mind be thoroughly charged and vitalized
with the proper force of it; let the sentiment
which it inspires, and the action which it
prompts, allure, incite, possess your souls; and
then speak, out of the fulness of your mind,
with a heart warmed by the truth you have
considered, and which you now are eager to
present.
And, SECONDLY: Always be careful to keep up
the habit of writing, with whatever of skill,
elegance, andforce, you can command.
You will need this for the enlarging and
refining of your vocabulary, if for nothing else.
Without it, you will almost certainly fall into the
habit of using cheap and common words; and
of using even these with only a rough approximation to their meaning, with no subtle or precise discrimination between them. Mr. Choate
once said to one of his students: "You don't
want a diction gathered from the newspapers,
caught from the air, common and unsuggestive;




46      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
but you want one whose every word is full.
freighted with suggestion and association, with
beauty and power." * Some words contain a
whole history in themselves. Panic, - it carries
us back to the day of Marathon. Panegyric, Pasquinade - there are multitudes of such words,
opulent, microcosmic, in which histories are
imaged, which record civilizations. Others recall
to us great passages of eloquence, or of noble
poetry, and bring in their train the whole splendor of such passages, when they are uttered.t
We cannot be always using such words. The
plainer are better, for common service. But
when these richer, remoter words, come into the
discourse, they make it ample and royal. They
are like glistening threads of gold, interwoven
with the commoner tissue. There is a certain
spell in them, for the memory, the imagination.
Elect hearers will be warmed and won by them.
But we cannot get such words, and keep them,
* Parker's Reminiscences: p. 249.
t Note II.




FORMATION OF SENTENCES.        47
except by writing. Reading will put them into
our hands. Only careful writing separates, signalizes, infixes them in the mind, makes them
our possession forever. We pass over them, as
we read. We pick them out, with the pen.*
So always be careful to write, habitually: not
sermons, necessarily; essays, analyses, articles
for papers, lectures if you like - whatever most
attracts you to the use of the pen.
You will need the constant discipline of such
writing to enable you to form sentences rapidly
and securely, -sentences which shall be firm,
well-proportioned, consistent, complete. Nothing is more absolutely fatal to the impression of
a spoken discourse than a succession of halting
broken-backed sentences. They are like brokenwinged birds, hindering the flight of the whole
flock; almost like broken rails on the track,
which fling the entire train into a heap. When
subject and predicate, protasis and apodosis, are
jumbled together in inextricable confusion, or
* Notes III. and IV.




48      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
are hopelessly disjointed from each other, no
one will long try to follow the speaker. At the
beginning of every sentence one should be able
to look to the end of it, that he himself may be
carried on, and his hearers with him, with ease
and steadiness, to its foreseen conclusion.
Not all men have the wit and wisdom of
Father Taylor, the famous preacher to sailors in
Boston. It is told of him  that once getting
involved in a sentence, where clause after clause
had been added to each other, and one had
branched off in this direction and another in
that, till he was hopelessly entangled, and the
starting point was quite out of sight, he paused,
and shook himself free of the perplexity by
saying: "Brethren, I don't know exactly where
I went in, in beginning this sentence; and I
don't in the least know where I'm coming out;
but one thing I do know, I'M BOUND FOR THE
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN!"  So he took a wholly
new departure, and left the broken-backed centipede of a sentence lying where it might, in the




THE DISCIPLINE OF WRITING.        49
track behind him. Perhaps that is as good a
way as any of getting out of such confusion, if
one ever is caught in it. But it is better never
to be so caught. Father Taylor himself could
not have repeated the experiment often.
Sentences may be either long or short, simple
or complex, but they should always be essentially periodic, having a beginning, a middle, and
an end; and the habit of forming them easily,
naturally, comes with the diligent use of the pen.*
One needs too this discipline of careful writing to systematize his thoughts; to make his
analysis of subjects, or his arrangement of arguments, clear, enlightening, satisfactory.
Without this, he will be constantly in danger
of falling into the habit of loose, vague, ineffectual thinking, — if it can be called thinking, at
all - with no sharpness, or system, or synthesis
it it, The pen gives march to the mind. It
teaches exactness, discrimination, and helps
the whqle constructive faculty. It is a great
* Note V.




50      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
educator. Better give up half your library than
let the pen fall into disuse. In fact your library
will lose more than half its value, unless you
use the pen to represent and preserve the results
of your reading. You must not, fumble over
subjects, but grasp them; not glance at them,
but resolve them: and the pen is the instrument
with which to do it.
Dr. Channing has some admirable words on
the benefits of composition to the writer himself,
which I will read if you allow me- though I
know how hazardous it is to introduce his polished periods into the midst of a talk like this.
He says: " We doubt whether a man ever brings
his faculties to bear with their whole force on a
subject, until he writes upon it..... By attempt.
ing to seize his thoughts, and fix them in an
enduring form, he finds them vague and unsatis.
factory, to a degree which he did not suspect,
and toils for a precision and harmony of views,
of which he never before felt the need. He
places his subject in new lights; submits it to a




BENEFIT OF COMPOSITION.          51
searching analysis; compares and connects it
with his various knowledge; seeks for it new
illustrations and analogies; weighs objections;
and, through these processes, often arrives at
higher truths than he at first aimed to illustrate. Dim conceptions grow bright. Glorious
thoughts, which had darted as meteors through
the mind, are arrested, and gradually shine with
a sun-like splendor, with prolific energy, on the
intellect and heart.... Even when composition
yields no such fruits, it is still a great intellectual
help. It always favors comprehensive and systematical views. The laborious distribution of
a great subject, so as to assign to each part or
topic its just position and due proportion, is
singularly fitted to give compass and persevering
force of thought." *
There is profound truth in these words. They
ought to be always borne in mind by one who is
training himself to speak without notes   He
must discipline his mind by the use of the pen,
* Channing's W )rks, vol. i. pp. 263, 264.




52      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
that the thoughts which subsequently rise to his
lips may be sound and clear, and worth the
uttering. Nothing but the pen can break up
books for us, and transmute them into personal
knowledge and thought.*
And further, THIRDLY: Be perfectly frank
with your people in regard to this matter of your
method of preaching; so putting yourselves at
once in right relations with them about it.
Let them know that you design to preach
without notes, and without memorizing the sermon; and give them your reasons. Tell them
that you have the strongest conviction that your
business in the pulpit is not to read essays, but
to fill your mind with clear, profound, quickening impressions of those sublime truths which
the Gospel reveals, and then to declare these
to thle congregation, as the Spirit of God shall
give you utterance. Ask them to bear with
you, if at first you seem to fail to do justice to
your subject, or to your own thought of it; and
* Note VI.




ONE SOURCE OF DIFFICULTY.       53
t) wait with patience until you are stronger, and
are able more fully to instruct and inspire them,
for the worship of God. So you will have a
free field for your effort, and be unembarrassed
by their reluctance or their surprise.
Many eminent clergymen speak admirably in
the lecture-room, or on the platform, who are
abashed and disconcerted in the pulpit, if they
have not a manuscript, because of their consciousness that there the people expect this.
The best debater whom I ever heard among
American ministers - if I should mention his
name all who know him would assent to the
praise - once told me that he never felt at ease
in the pulpit without notes before him, because
his people were accustomed to these, and would
feel, in the absence of them, that his preparation
had been incomplete, and that the service was
insufficient. A very eminent clergyman of this
city, who sustains important relations to this
institution, has told me the same thing, in substance, of himself, within a few weeks. With all




54      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
his culture, all his power, and all the prestige
given by many honorable years of Christian service,-though speaking on the platform with
ease, elegance, and continual success, —it has
always been an awkward thing to him to stand
in his pulpit without a manuscript. Even Dr.
Bethune - wonderfully free, versatile, engaging,
impressive, as he was, in almost all forms of
public address —I think invariably took notes
with him to the pulpit: that even if he did not
use them he might have them on the desk, open
before him.
The sympathies of a congregation are ex
tremely swift and subtle. If a few are surprised,
disappointed, restless, when they see you in the
pulpit without a manuscript, if they turn away
as careless of yourr words and expectant of failure, the feeling will propagate itself rapidly and
far; and to speak freely, with self-possession, in
the face of such indifference or distrust, will be
very difficult. It is like trying to laugh aloud in
a vacuum. You want the interest on the part




NEED OF SYMPATHY.          55
of your people, to stimulate your powers. You
want the quickening warmth of sympathy. One
does see, I know, roses and pinks blooming on
the terraces around Genoa in the month of
December, with ice near them, half-an-inch
thick, on the basins of fountains. But that has
always seemed to me an almost unaccountable
physical fact. And certainly the mind will not
germinate and bloom in an atmosphere full of
icy indifference. The spirit of the speaker will
inevitably be affected by the doubt and disappointment which encircle and chill him. He will
begin to hesitate, because he is thus hindered;
and very likely will begin, before many minutes,
to feel his heart beat, and his unsustained head
reel and swim. When that comes to pass he
had better sit down.
It is far better to avoid such manacles and
miseries at the very start, by putting yourself on
your feet and at ease with your people at once,
through their thorough understanding of what
you mean to do, and of the reasons which move




j6      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
you to do it. Let it be distinctly understood by
them that at one of the services, at least — the
morning, I think, being usually the better —
you will preach without notes. Then you won't
have to contend, at any rate, against their disap.
pointment. The difficulties you meet afterward
will be only intrinsic, and not adventitious. And
that of itself will be a great gain.
And FOURTHLY: Discharge your mind of the
sermon when once you have preached it; so keeping the mind free and open for other subjects
succeeding that one.
I cannot give you any rule by which to do
this. I only know that it can be done, though it
is not easy; that the habit of doing it can be
formed, like the habit of dining at a certain
hour, or of walking at a certain pace, or like any
other habit which we make for ourselves. And
I know that it is indispensable to one who would
speak energetically, usefully, without help from
his notes.
The lawyer does it, all the time. All sorts of




CHANGE OF SUBJECTS.           57
cases come successively befDre him, and each, in
its turn, fully occupies his mind: cases of insurance; cases involving felony - murder, theft,
forgery, barratry, libel, or what not; cases of
patent-rights; cases involving the title to lands;
horse-cases, perhaps. While he is arguing one,
his thoughts are full of it. The next eliminates
it wholly from his mind; and the one is forgotten when the other is before him.
A minister must learn to do much the same
thing. It is not easy, as I said. I used to be
more embarrassed at this point than at almost
any other. But I found that one great secret of
success in doing what was needed was to take a
second subject very different from the first:
then the expulsive power of the new subject, occupying the thoughts, freed them from embarrassing reminiscences of the other. If you have
preached on a theme of doctrine, for example,
in the morning, take some point of Christian
practice for your theme in the evening.  If
zne discourse is preceptive and hortatory, let




58       PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
another be narrative, in its structure. If one is
closely argumentative, let the next be a careful
yet free exposition of a parable or a psalm.- So
you will find that the mind releases itself from
the one subject, by taking another entirely distinct; its natural resilience is helped and stimulated, and you cease to be weighted with your
previous processes.
In this way, or some other, you must secure
the result which I indicate. Otherwise, you will
be all the while in danger of repeating preceding trains of thought, of applying the intellec.
tual methods proper to one subject to anothet
widely different, and of wholly failing to widen
and enrich your mind. You will be likely, even,
to get by degrees a set of pet subjects, of recurring phrases, and of familiar illustrations; and
to feel yourself, and to make your people feel as
well, that your mind is becoming narrow and
unproductive through your method of preaching.
Applying' the same general modes of treatment
to all sorts of subjects, and getting the subjects




PRACTICE OF "EVANGELISTS."       59
themselves continually mixed and tangled in
your thoughts, your whole force will dwindle.
The "evangelists" of forty years ago were
accustomed to get a set of sermons —enough
perhaps for four or six weeks of daily preaching
— and then to go from place to place delivering
these. They investigated no fresh subjects, but
repeated the discourses which they had prepared,
over and over. The result was that the first
impression made by them was always vivid and
energetic; but they became less convincing and
powerful as they went on, till at last their minds
were as dull and flameless as a burnt cinder.
They were some of them powerful men, in their
day: but their very names are now almost forgotten; and those who continued in that form of
service left no more impression of themselves
on the religious thought of the country, or on its
theological literature, than a bird's wing leaves
on the air.
You must keep the mind fresh and hospitable
for new subjects, keep it all the time alert and




60      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
advancing, if you are to preach without a manu.
script with any success. Each sermon must
have its own vitality, and stand apart from every
other. You must be as free in discussing each
succeeding subject as you were in treating the
one before; and in order to this the sermon once
preached must be thereafter wholly and swiftly
discharged from the thoughts.
There is a certain disadvantage here, or what
may appear such, in preaching without notes.
It relates to exchanges of your pulpit for others.
When one writes his sermons, an exchange of
pulpits means a week's or a half-week's less work
in the year. The sermons already prepared are
at hand; and the principal duty is to read them.
On the other hand, one often finds quite as
much difficulty, I do not know but more, in
re-charging the mind with a previous sermon,
to be preached in exchange, than he did in preparing it at the outset, if there exists no manuscript of it. To re-absorb is harder than to
produce. It is more difficult in preaching it the




THE MATTER OF EXCHANGES.        6I
seconc time to keep the recollective force of
the mind in abeyance, and to let the constructive, creative forces freely work. I confess that
to this day an exchange of pulpits rather dismays me. I should always prefer to stay at
home.
However, one can acquire more and more
facility in doing this; and he will always find
that the more vitally, thoroughly, he fills his
mind with the subject which he treats, at home
or abroad, the more effective he is in preaching.
So I don't think that there is here any real disadvantage, except to the lazy. I verily believe,
Young Gentlemen, that the kingdom of God
advances more on spoken words than it does
on essays written and read; on words, that is,
in which the present feeling and thought of the
teaching mind break into natural and forceful
expression. There is always reward, therefore,
as well as work, in fitting oneself for performing
this office; and the work itself should only be to
us an incentive.




62      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
FIFTHLY: Never be discouraged by what seems
to you, perhaps to others, comparativefailure.
Such failure occurs everywhere.   Lawyers
lose cases, and physicians lose patients. Even
editors, it is said, sometimes write articles that
are not absolutely brilliant and powerful, up to
the line of their highest capacity. The painter
fails to secure a good portrait, though he has
such a subject as Gerrit Smith or Charlotte
Cushman. The architect's mind gets into a
cramp, and he can do nothing in planning the
building to his own satisfaction.  Men who
write sermons fail, at times, as well as those who
preach without notes. They write in a languid
and inert state; they quarrel with the discourses
while they preach them; very likely they burn
them when they are done. My father once
burned four hundred at a flash; and I always
honored him for it.
So don't be discouraged, as if it were a thing
that never happened to any other sort of workman if you fail in your effort when treating a




FINE PR3CESSES INEFFECTIVE.     63
subject without a manuscript. It is not impossible that what seems to you failure may appear
quite otherwise to your people. They may be
most impressed by that with which you are mostdiscontented. The train of thought which had
interested your mind, but which would not come
back while you were speaking, would have been
too subtle and refined for your hearers.  The
commoner thoughts which you were obliged to
substitute for it reached some of them more
effectively. The fine processes, in which you had
rejoiced but which you forgot, would have been
too delicate.  The bolder broad-axe style of
treatment, to which you resorted but of which
you were ashamed, did better service. The
most numerous and inspiriting echoes often
come back from what you esteemed your poorest work: and you find to your surprise that
hearts were comforted, despondencies were dispelled, faltering wills received fresh impulse,
from the very sermon which to you appeared a
perfect failure.*
* Note VIL




64      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
At any rate remember this: that your business is to do the best you can in the preaching
of the Gospel, every time you stand in the pulpit; and if you are conscious that you have
done that, before the sermon and in the sermon,
then let that suffice. If you feel that you have
failed of the success which you hoped for, if
disparaging remarks come back to you from
others, be never discouraged; and certainly
never get morbid about it. "In your patience
possess ye your souls:" if your Greek Professor
will allow the translation,'by your endurance,
get full possession, and perfect mastery, of your
own souls.' That is the first step toward getting an equal mastery over others. "Quit you
like men; be strong." "Forgetting the things
which are behind, reach forth "- stretch forth,
bending forward, as the racer toward the goal —
unto those which are before.
Remember the pains men take to train themselves in other and lower departments of effort,
and be ashamed if you are not willing to give to




SELF-DISCIPLINE PROPER.       65
this grandest office on earth the labor and self.
discipline which are needed for success in it. I
see the athlete, the gymnast, the rope-walker,
the man who is to swing upon the trapeze,
developing each muscle, giving every nerve its
fitting training, for the feats they accomplish,
until the results are simply amazing; I remember the tough pugilistic expression which Paul
employs, "I keep under the body," voatcot,
I beat it black and blue, if needful - and bring
it to subjection; and then I think with shame
how few and slight, in comparison are the
efforts which we make for success in our calling. I remember a sword-dance which I once
saw at Wiirzburg, in Bavaria, performed by some
Arabian gymnasts, leaping over and among the
gleaming, sharp, and cruel blades which would
have instantly drunk the life from you or me,
but amid which they lightly sprang and danced,
as if they had been stalks of thistle; and I say
to myself, and repeat it to you, How ready
should we be to give ourselves a training for




66      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
our work as much more exact and thorough
than theirs as our work is more important!' *
If you do this, in the final result you will not
fail; and if, in your preliminary efforts, you now
and then do fail, be never discouraged. Make
the failure a reason for more intense succeeding
effort; a wing, not a weight; a spur, to stimulate to fresh endeavor, and not a stiletto, to stab
out the life!
But, FINALLY, Gentlemen: Do no violence to
your own nature;- and if you find, after sufficient conscientious trial, that you can do more
useful service with the pen than without it, then
use the pen, without reluctance, without reserve,
and be thankful that you have it.
There are some men, no doubt, who can never
acquire complete self-possession in presence of
an audience, so as to be at ease and in vigor
when addressing large numbers face to face.
They are fewer, I am confident, than is commonly
supposed. But there are some such; who can
* Note VIII.




USE OF THE PEN.            67
hardly, at any rate, prepare themselves for this
office without such a martyrdom as they are not
called to; while the same men may be swift,
bold, powerful, with the pen, and in reading their
writings may be very effective. It would be a
wanton waste of time, if not indeed a sin against
nature, for such men to give up their notes in
the pulpit. They ought to use them, and to be
grateful to God for this means of usefulness.
The pen is a prodigious power in the world; an
invincible moral and social force; a real lever
to lift the race forward. It has blessed all times,
since man first discovered the use of the alphabet.
God Himself has put honor upon it, in writing
His law on tables of stone, and not merely speaking it in articulate tones. He has honored it in
the gospels, preserving by it the words of His
Son. Any man should be glad and proud to use
it, for Him from whom the power comes.
I have never believed it the best plan for all
ministers to preach without notes. I only think
it better for some. And my remarks, now and




68      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
hereafter, are intended only for those among you
who think that it may be better for them. If
you think so, I shall be delighted to say any
word that may help you in your effort. For really
I think the work you contemplate as great a
work as ever is given to men on earth: to bring
Divine truths, with earnest utterance, to human
souls. Never look upon your congregation as so
many'cabbage-heads,' as some one has inconsiderately said, but always look on them as immortal intelligences, each one of whom shall live
forever! and then bring all the power you can to
urge them to righteousness, through thoughtful,
fervent, inspiring speech.  It is the noblest of
human errands.  Whether, therefore, you do
your work with notes or without them, do it
courageously, earnestly, with devotion; with a
glad sense of the greatness of it, and a full consecration of every force and faculty to it.
If I might change one letter in a precept of
St. Paul, I should say: " One man esteemeth one
way above another; another man esteemetd




THE WORK NOBLE.            69
every way alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." And whichever way you
finally select, strive always to be able to say:
"Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and
whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether
we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
Working for the Master in this high spirit,
the work which you do will be always noble; and
the reward which comes after it will be sure,
and immortal 




SECOND LECTURE.
Aftr. President: Young Gentlemen: —
I am very happy to meet you here again, — the
more so, as an hour ago, while I was drifting
about the Bay, I thought it very doubtful if I
should be able to meet you at all. The fact is
that you people who live on the wrong side of
the East River are apt to get isolated -if
you will pardon the pronunciation - in such
weather as this; and we, who live where we
ought to, find it hard work to get to you.
I ought perhaps, to add, before beginning
upon my subject this afternoon, that I have
been occupied, to-day, before leaving home, with
some of those sad and exacting duties of which
every minister meets so many, which for the
time, wholly occupy his mind, and draw largely
70




SPEAKING TO STUDENTS.        71
upon his sympathies; so that you may find me,
I fear, even less prepared than I should otherwise
have been to speak to you on the theme before
us. I shall trust to your kindness to excuse the
defects which you may observe.
I am again surprised by finding present not
only the students of this institution, to whom, as
being younger than myself, I had thought it possible that I might say something which should be
of more or less service in their coming work, but
also these distinguished men - Professors, Pastors, Secretaries, Editors, Presidents of Colleges,
Lawyers, Teachers, and eminent Merchants,
whom I have not come prepared to address. I
can only say that when I am invited to breakfast
or lunch I do not go dressed for an evening dinner-party; and when I am asked to speak to
students, who may not know even as much as
myself, I do not prepare myself to speak to
others who know much more. I long ago found
cut that when a Committee ask one to' make a
few remarks,' what they mean is'an address of




72      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
half-an-hour.' But I certainly thought that I was
perfectly safe in literally accepting the kind invitation of these Professors and Doctors of Divinity, and coming to speak to students only.
At any rate, I shall stick to the programme,
and "talk," as I intended, without attempting
any studied and elaborate address, suitable for
these gentlemen accomplished in their professions.
Let me say, still further, that after my rapid
talk of last week I was pursued with the fear
that I must have seemed egotistical in it; as if
I quite over-estimated the consequence of whatever experience I have had, in the matter of
preaching without my notes. I hope, however,
that you did me the justice to look at the thing
from my point of view, and to recognize the fact
that I said what I did only because it seemed
inevitable, as laying the basis for my subsequent
suggestions; and, also, as illustrating the fact
that there was nothing whatever exceptional in
my case; that the change in my method was not
a sudden one; that whatever I ha'e done in this




SPECIFIC CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS.   73
direction has been only the result of continuous
effort, and that anybody else who wishes to do it,
and is willing to work for it, can do as much:
- some of you, I am sure, can do much more, as
I sincerely hope that you will.
Now for what I have principally to say to-day.
After the preliminary suggestions which I
made last week I propose to present to you certain specific conditions of success — or what I
esteem such - in the work of preaching without
one's notes. First I shall speak of those which
are especially physical and mental, and after.
ward of those which are moral and spiritual.
Those of the latter class I shall hope to present
next week. Of those of the former class I shall
speak to-day. Some of them are essential; all
of them are important; and in the absence of
any one of them, the highest success can hardly,
I think, be ever realized.
Before proceeding to consider them, however,
one by one, let me say in general, as preliminary
to every thing which is to follow, that I assume,




74      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
as an essential pre-requisite to all such success,
a serious, devout, intelligent, inspiring conviction
of the Divine origin and authority of the Gospel,
and of its transcendent importance to men. —
This is a fundamental condition, indispensable to
every thing else; and without it no instruction
or rule that I know of can be of real service to
any preacher.
Of course, this is not merely a condition to
success in preaching without a manuscript. It
is a condition to such success in preaching in
any way, either with notes or without them. No
man can hope to accomplish results, permanent
and fruitful, in the work of the ministry, unless
this conviction is in his mind, radicated there,
ruling over his thoughts, inspiring him to constant endeavors, and kindling in him a constant
enthusiasm.
It is difficult to see, indeed, why a man without
this should ever enter the ministry at all, as long
as bread and meat can be won in other reputable
ways. His work must be an immensely hard




FAITH IN THE GOSPEL, NEEDFUL.   75
one, and its pull upon him must be very exhausting. For a man in preaching has not only to
give sermons, grammatically composed, but in
order to render effective service he must speak,
or must seem to speak, from the heart; and if
one has not the love of the Gospel enthroned in
his heart the work must draw with prodigious
force on all his nature, mental and moral, while
the reward for it can never be large. Such a
one will almost certainly be soon introducing
some novelty of doctrine, to refresh his mind with
what enlists his conviction, or what at least is
attractive to his thought. He will tend more
and more to become a mere teacher of natural
ethics, or of social philosophy; and after a while
will be likely to leave the ministry altogether.
A man must have faith in God's authorship
of the Gospel, and in its importance to man's
well-being, in order to impulse and success in
proclaiming it.  This is necessary, if for no
other reason, that he himself may understand
his proper function and errand in the world;




76      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
that he may recognize himself as essentially a
herald — tcspv~, tpVlpv'aoo - proclaiming the glad
tidings of God to mankind. He is not sent to
be an ingenious and eloquent sophist, inventing
theories of his own, or accepting the theories
invented by others. He is to bring to men the
wisdom which God has first revealed to him in
His word,- accepting, pondering, absorbing that,
in his own mind, and then declaring it vividly
to others, through character and through speech.
So his office becomes a grand one: unique, in
fact, among the offices accomplished by man.
So he is brought into intimate communion with
the mind of the Most High. Strength of purpose, expectation of success, and a serene fearlessness, become the very prerogatives of his
office, when he stands to represent the King of
the world, in uttering His messages to the men
of the world.*
The same conviction of the Divine origin and
authority of the Gospel, and of its infinite im.
* Note IX.




ENTHUSIASM KINDLED.          77
portance to man, is needed to help one in meditating his subject, as well as in presenting it. Tt
will quicken him in his study, as well as in the
pulpit, if he understands that his business is, in
investigating the word, to ascertain what the
thought of God is, as therein set forth, and then
to present it -while gathering around it all the
lights of reflection and scholarship, that he may
make it most evident and lucent, and in its
presentation most commanding and attractive.
This will lift him to higher levels of thought,
and lead him out into widest ranges of inquiry
and study.  It will draw forth and stimulate
each power within him, that he may apprehend
what the Author of the Gospel would have him
speak, and may speak it in a manner most pertinent and persuasive.
It will kindle his enthusiasm, and help him
in even the delivery of his message, making
him courageous, and setting him free from all
bondage to circumstances, however embarrassing
these may be. We hear a great deal said, in




78      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
these days, about awkward pulpits; how high
they often are, how narrow, how restraining.
There is something in it.. They are often very
awkward; and I criticise no one who prefers a
plain desk, on an open stage, to one of those
embattled boxes into which a minister sometimes is _rt.  I would certainly rather myself
stand here, and speak to you from this platform,
than atterr pt to do it from the pulpit behind me:
though we all have seen those which were far
worse thait  that.
I remet iber, years ago, when I was settled at
Brookline, an excellent minister, now deceased,
who was then a somewhat distinguished man,
came one Sunday to preach for me. He was
shorter than I was, and I therefore thought
that he might like the desk lowered, on which
the sermon was to lie, and suggested this
to him. But he said, No; and it remained as
it was. I found afterward that he was shortsighted, and yet preferred to use no glasses: so
the manuscript must be brought as closely as




A PULPIT BARRICADE.         79
possible to his eye.  Instead of lowering the
desk, he raised it still higher, as high as it
would go. He then closed the Bible, which had
lain open upon it. He placed a hymn-book on
that; another hymn-book on that; a pile of sermons, a dozen I should think, on the top of
that; and then the sermon which he was to
read, surmounting the whole. When the whole
structure had been erected, he was left standing
behind it, and just able to look over it, while the
congregation could see almost nothing of him
but the top of his head. Then he read his text,
as his custom was, without first naming its
place in the Scripture; and the text proved to
be: "Ye shall see greater things than these!"
It was a serious service, and a devout congregation; but the smile that rippled round the room,
if not quite as loud as this of yours, was quite
as instant and universal.
Any man may be pardoned for not desiring a
breast-work like that, between him and the
people. But if one is penetrated, is essentially




80      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
imbued, with the thorough conviction that the
message which he brings is a message from God,
and that it is vital to man's well-being, it will not
make much difference to him where he preaches.
Even such a barricade could not hinder his utterance. He will preach on the swinging deck
of a ship, so long as he is not sea-sick; on the
stump, around which the pioneers gather; on a
box, at the street-corner; if need be, from the'Devil's pulpit,' on Monument Mountain. He
will be at home in whatever circumstances, if
this conviction really fills him, that the word
which he preaches is God's word to man.*
Some one has said that "no faculty of the
mind is weak which has heart in it." Certainly
it is true that no faculty is strong which has not
heart in it; and whoever addresses men has to
learn the lesson. If one is to speak on Sanitary
Reform, he needs the underlying sense of the
greatness of the interest of public health, and of
the importance of the measures which he advo* Note X.




UNDERTONE OF SERMONS.          8I
cates to the maintenance of that health. If he
is to speak for the maintenance and the further.
ance of International Peace, he needs to feel how
vast are its blessings, and how tremendous the
miseries and sins which it displaces, the moral
decadence which it will arrest.
So, and still more, if he speaks of the Gospel,
he must feel how glorious that is in itself, and
how adapted to man's vast need. This must be
the undertone of every sermon; like the
golden ground on which the angels of Fra Angelico walk and worship. The conviction of it
must be as a sun-gleam, smiting his mind, and
quickening to activity all its beauty and all its
force. If he has not this, his thought will inevitably be obscure, his feeling dull, his utterance wanting in the elements of power. A
deist, a fatalist, a materialist, a sceptic of whatever sort, undertaking as a business to preach
the Gospel, will inevitably be like a blind man
discoursing on the splendors of light, and the
charming and delicate interplay of colors; or




82      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
like a deaf man, describing oratorios. Every
one who loves the Gospel will see that he is
speaking theoretically, in the way of imitation,
from report of others, and not from real and rich
experience. So his words will want fire. They
will stir no emotion, and touch no heart. They
will be like a smile, in which the lips laugh,
while the rest of the face is harsh and sullen.
In order then that a man may have this conviction, pervading his mind - that the Gospel is
God's word to the world, and that he is but a
herald sent to proclaim it - that he may enter
into this high enthusiasm, and keep his spirit
glowing with it, he should meditate much on the
facts which prove God's authorship of the Scripture: on the amazing unity of the Bible; on its
majesty, surpassing all reach of man's thought;
on the holiness of its law — a holiness against
which man's will rebels, and which could not
have sprung from the nature that resists it; on
its perfect adaptation to human wants, its power
to soothe, to inspire, and to purify, the peace it




PHYSICAL VIGOR.           83
gives to the penitent heart, the hope it quick.
ens in darkest hours, the tranquil courage it
gives in death.  Keep your minds under the
manifold proofs of God's authorship of the Gospel -proofs which in the aggregate amount to
demonstration - till the soul is glowing and incandescent with this conviction: that you in
proclaiming this to men are speaking to them
the thoughts of the Almighty. The constant
inspiring force of this will exalt your whole
ministry.
Now for the specific conditions of which I am
to speak, which are important to any man's success who would preach this Gospel without aid
from notes.
The FIRST which I mention is: Physical vigor,
kept at its highest attainable point.
You will think that I begin a good way back,
and so I do; but this is the under-pinning of
every thing else, and it must be treated as first
in order.
Of course we know that the healthiest men




-84      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
are by no means always the most intellectual.
It is not necessary that a man should be trained
like a prize-fighter, in active service, to be a good
preacher. But the intellectual man is always
then in the best condition for effective, vigorous,
sustained mental effort, when his physical vigor
is most nearly at its height. It is not necessary
to go into any argument to show this, or carefully to develop the subtle relations between
physiology and psychology. Experience proves
it.
Every student knows, for example, how easy
and swift mental processes are on some days,
which on others are tardy and difficult; because
in the one case the mind takes vigor from the
body, and the thoughts go forth refreshed by its
health, while in the other case there seems to be
a mist on the brain, from some perturbed state
of the physical system, or the invisible spiritual
muscle which holds the mind to a strict and
searching investigation of subjects has been
silently relaxed. A clear, crisp morning-air:




HEALTH, THE BED-PLATE.         85
how it sets the very soul in a glow, on a day
like this! After a brisk and breezy walk, after a
swim beyond the breakers, after a rapid horseback
ride - it is astonishing, the swift change which is
wrought, of mental renewal; how subjects clear
up, and faculty is freshened, and we are ready
for any work. After sound and sufficient sleep,
we wake in the morning prepared for efforts
which in the weariness of the preceding evening
had been simply impossible. Reading, conversation, public discourse — any thing is then possible, the refreshed body lending enterprise to
the mind.
This emphasizes the rule that we must main.
tain, as far as we can, full health of body, if we
would discourse to men on the themes of the
Gospel, without help from a manuscript, with
any success. Such health is the bed-plate, on
which the whole mental machinery must iest
and work. If this be cracked, or displaced, all
the mechanism that stands on it will be jarred
and disturbed, and made ineffective. You must




86      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
work the ship after that, if you work it at all,
with the donkey-engine.
Such health, indeed, is particularly necessary
to the rapid, robust, effective working of those
special faculties which are always most needed
in public speech. The judgment, the will, the
creative imagination, — the power of rapidly
originating thought, and as rapidly combining't. in relations with others, - the power of expressing it freely and with facility, and so of
setting forth the subjects which are treated
in energetic and perspicuous speech: these
are the powers which the preacher requires,
if he is to speak without aid from his notes.
And these are the powers which depend most
eminently on fulness of health as their condition,
It may not be so with some other faculties.
The fancy, for instance, may sometimes act
most rapidly and brilliantly, in connection with
morbid physical conditions; as is shown in not
a few poets and artists, perhaps in some preach.




GENERAL MENTAL VIGOR.         87
ers. The memory will sometimes show abnormal activity when the brain is in any thing but
a healthful condition; and the emotional nature
is undoubtedly more excitable — though its
power of propagating emotion in others is not,
I think, in like measure increased —when the
body is suffering from a diseased sensibility.
So it may be with still other faculties. But
the general and harmonious intellectual vigor,
whereby one conceives subjects clearly and
fully, analyzes them rapidly, sets them forth
with exactness in an orderly presentation, and
urges them powerfully on those who listenthis requires opulence of health; a sustained
and abounding physical vigor. In the absence
of this, the power will decline. If the mind
still works energetically at all, it will do so only
by jerks, and in spasms, not continuously; will
do it with particular faculties, not with the con.
sentaneous and cooperating energy of all its
powers, working together for a noble result. It
may surprise men, still; but it hardly by possibility will sway and inspire them.




88      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
A conscious and abundant physical vigor is
necessary, even, to a fit and impressive delivery
of one's thoughts. The weak man is apt to
screech in his utterance, and now and then to
explode in his tones; while the strong man
speaks easily, naturally, without any push of his
voice by the will. His is a power which comes
from within, and which manifests itself as
freely and steadily as the power that moves the
levers of machinery.
Indeed, such sound physical health is, directly,
a positive power to the speaker. It has almost
a moral force in it. It represents a complete
development of manhood in him; and it carries
men forward, with immediate impulse, on the
efflux of its force. Webster is the typical illustration of this among American speakers. The
vast mass of the man made his words impressive. As a farmer said of him, after hearing
one of his brief addresses: " He didn't say very
much, but every word that he did say weighed
a pound." He carried men's minds, and over



HEALTH, A MORAL FORCE.        89
whelmingly pressed his thought upon them, with
the immense current of his physical energy.
Once in a famous case at Northampton —
known to the lawyers as the "Smith-will case"
— where a large property was involved, Mr.
Webster was employed for the maintenance of
the will, and Mr. Choate was his antagonist.
At one point in the progress of the trial Mr.
Choate quoted a dictum, —from Lord Camden, I
think it was, -to the effect that a witness to the
execution of an instrument must be competent
not only to certify to the fact of the manual
signature of the person by whom the paper was
executed, but also to judge of his mental soundness at the time of his signing it. Mr. Choate
cited this, in impeachment of one of the witnesses to the will. Mr. Webster could not
avoid meeting it. When he came to it he said,
in substance, as I have been told:'My learned
friend has quoted from Lord Camden, to this
effect' — (repeating the dictum).'Gentlemen,
this means that when you call in ene of your




90      PREACHING WIT HOUT NOTES.:arm-hands to witness your signature to a conveyance or a mortgage, he is not merely to see
you write your name, but he is to be able to look
into your mind, and see if that is sound and
discreet! Lord Camden says that.' Then up
went his head, and out went his chest:' Daniel Webster says THAT'S NONSENSE.' And so it
was, for that jury at any rate.
We cannot certainly be Daniel Websters,
either physically or mentally. But we may
attain our fair share of physical vigor, and
gain the force which comes with that.  It is
especially needful, I think, to the minister. An
impression sometimes prevails among people
that religion is good for dyspeptics and invalids,
for nervous people, and for women; but that it
does not suit well with a body full of spirit and
health. They are apt to expect to find in the
minister a debilitated student, who does not
know much of what real and vigorous manhood
means. His words are for persons like himself;
and not for hale men, in an out-door life. A




THE MINISTER NEEDS IT.        9I
full development of vital force, a robust and
athletic habit of body, if he can gain it, is the
very best answer to such an idea. Therefore, if
for this reason only, it is a Christian duty to gain
it, and to keep our merely physical force at the
highest point.
When I was ordained I was in somewhat
delicate health, not long recovered from a serious sickness, thinner and paler than I have
since been. The " Charge" was given to me by
a most excellent man, a frienid of my father for
many years, a friend of my own from my boyhood up, to whom I was attached by many
tender and grateful ties, and whom I had every
reason to revere. He was a man of very full
and florid habit, who had not seen his knees, as
they say, for twenty years; and as he stood
speaking on the platform, while I stood listening
beneath, the contrast between us was undoubtedly striking. It was emphasized, perhaps, to
some of the congregation, when looking at me
with tears in his eyes, he said very earnestly:




92      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES..
" My young brother, I charge you, Keep under
the body! "
It did seem rather absurd at the time, as an
address from him to me; but it was nevertheless a sound, wholesome, apostolic charge. He
meant what he said; and I should repeat it on
every occasion when such a service was committed to me. I repeat it to myself to-day, and
repeat it to you: "Keep under the body." Only
be careful to give the precept its proper meaning,
and to obey it in the right sense. Keep under
the body, as the rider keeps his horse beneath
him; as the sailor keeps the deck; as the
builder keeps ladder and scaffolding beneath
him. Keep it in constant subjection to the
mind. Keep it under, that the whole intellectual
force may securely rest and rise upon it; that it
may be not an opponent of the spirit, but its
continual supporter and minister.
In order to this, avail yourselves of all the
means which experience suggests, your own or
others'. Leave no means untried, that are apt




MEANS OF HEALTH.           93
to the end. Use good, simple, wholesome food,
and plenty of it. Find out for yourselves what
food suits you best, and govern yourselves
accordingly, without reference to the theories of
other people about it. Take exercise as you
need it, and physical recreation. Get plenty of
sleep, and as early as you can. The'beautysleep' of the mind comes generally before midnight. Do your work in the day-time, in the
sunshine, if possible; under the light which God
has given, and not in an artificial blaze. Enjoy
the intervals of rest and relaxation, as you have
opportunity, and as you find need.*
Use every help, which experience indicates
as reasonable and right, to secure the condition, and maintain the condition, of full normal
physical vigor; and remember that you are
responsible to no man for that which you do in
order to this supreme result. You are responsible to the Son of God, and to God Himself —
who has given you the body as the instrument
* Note XI.




94      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
through which the mind is to work; who requires
you to keep it continually attuned for effective
continuous service. So nourish and train it, to
the highest point of strength and vigor attainable by you; and whenever you speak without a
manuscript you will feel the effect. Force, buoyancy, elasticity, vigor, will come to the mind
from the sound and energetic physical force
which underlies and sustains it.
And this leads me to say, SECONDLY: Be very
sure to keep your mind in a state of habitual
activity, alertness, energy;-so that it will be
ready to grasp subjects strongly, and to handle
them with easy and effectual force; so that
thoughts shall come to you rapidly when you
speak, and your freedom in uttering them be
proportioned to the rapidity with which they
are suggested.
Keep the mind up to its highest point. Of
course we all know the immense differences that
appear in it, at different times, in regard to that
dynamic force by which it seizes a subject pre



DIFFERENT MENTAL STATES.       95
sented, opens it rapidly in its parts and relations,
and sets it forth clearly for others to consider.
Sometimes it seems impossible to accomplish
what at other times is easy. Things are dim
and obscure to us on one day, which on another
are manifest, vivid.  The whole atmosphere
seems changed.
A man going up Mount Washington sometimes finds at the top only a cloudy or stormy
darkness, through which the sight does not pass
at all. The whole peak welters in waves of fog.
On another day - called by those who live there'bright' - the air is full of a shimmering haze,
in which the light-rays seem inter-twisted and
tangled together, so that no eye can fairly pierce
the glittering mist. It sees only summits of the
neighboring mountains, surging around the central crest. But at last there comes a resplendent
day, when through the clear transpicuous air you
look afar. Your vision has found its perfect
medium. You see the green meadows of Conway lying almost at your feet, with the Saco




96      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
winding through; and sixty miles away, as the
bird flies, you look into the harbor of Portland,
and perhaps see beyond it the flash of sails out
on the sea.
There are states of the mind which correspond with these changes, and of which they are
the physical parallel. There come to us sometimes high, luminous moments, of vision and
intuition, when we see at a glance what before
had been hidden, and realms of thought are instantly opened; when a moment will do foi us,
what previous hours had failed to accomplish.
Then subjects instantaneously take form, discourses shape themselves in our thoughts, and
both outline and detail are conceived at once
with perfect vividness.*
This story is told of an eminent living clergyman: I will not vouch for it, in all its particulars, but in its main features I have the
assurance that it is authentic. He was walking one evening to a church at New Haven, at
* Note XII.




SERMON SUDDENLY SUGGESTED.    97
which he was to preach, with a young lady, at
whose home perhaps he had been entertained.
She said to him on the way: " Dr. C-, is it true,
as I have heard, that you sometimes do not
select your text till you have gone into the pulpit?"  "Yes," he said, "it is sometimes true;
and I wish you would give me a text for this
evening, for really I have not yet decided on
what to preach."  "I would if I could," she
said; "but I can't think of any text at this
moment, unless it be:' The Lord spake unto
Moses and unto Aaron, saying."' "Excellent!"
said he. " It is precisely what I want: I shall
preach upon that." And he did. It would puzzle us, perhaps, to discern at a glance what he
saw in it. But it was one of the grandest subjects that can be given to any preacher, that
can be considered by any man. It was the vast
subject of the Divine Revelation. It opened to
him, all at a flash, like a bright broad landscape
seen through a crevice.
Man's need of such a Revelation from above,




98      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
and his constant tendency to sink into deeper
darkness without it; the fair expectation, from
God's wisdom and goodness, that He will
give it; the different modes in which it is
shown by Scripture to have been given —by
oral utterance, by written words, by ecstatic
visions and dreams, by prophetic inspiration, by
the coming of the Son of God Himself, who
shows to the world the very mind of God, as
well as utters His separate thoughts, at last by
the advent of the Holy Ghost, teaching the
evangelists and the apostles; then by all these,
combined in one Bible, a book for all ages, a
book for the world, a book to be interpreted to
the studious reader by the same Divine Spirit
from which its inspiration came: — this was the
substance of the sermon. Then followed the
lessons: of the grace of God, in giving this to
man, and preserving it in the world; of the duty
and privilege of attending to it; of the wickedness of substituting any thing for it -either
Reason, or the Church; of the glory of the state




THE MIND A BATTERY.          99
in which even this Revelation will be needed no
more, since we shall see God face to face.
The whole discourse - as represented to me
was compact, complete, powerful, from the outset on; because it was fashioned by a mind in
this high, fervid, luminous state of which I have
spoken. It was precisely adapted, also, to a
semi-sceptical state of mind at that time prevailing in the college, of which he was aware;
and so it was every way timely and effective.
Well, of course, this is an extraordinary inAtance; as the mental state expressed in it was
extraordinary. But I suspect that every man who
is much accustomed to speaking without manuscript has met something like it in his experi.
ence. The mind now and then comes into a
state in which any suggestion, any occurrence,
will evoke great fulness and force of thought.
It is then like a battery fully charged. It does
not take a 64 pounder to draw out the flash
from such a battery. A knitting-needle will do
it; the smallest bit of broken wire. And nothing




I00     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
is easier than to preach in that mood. Any text
that is touched will set in motion trains of
thought, to be instantly elaborated, and ready
for instant presentation.
But this state of mind cannot be extemporized. The will can no more create it at pleasure than it can make us three inches taller. It
will always be found, when it has come, to have
had deep vital roots beneath it. How then can
we gain it? and keep the mind in this best condition for grandest service? The means are
many. I can mention only one or two.
Reading, intently, and rapidly, is one of them,
There is great virtue in rapid reading, when it
is also attentive and studious. Ours is apt, I
think, to be too lazy, indolent, self-indulgent.
We read, and hardly know sometimes whether
we are reading or dozing.* Reading rapidly, as
well as attentively, gives pace to the mind, a
general celerity to the whole mental movement.
It trains the intellectual force to just that sure
* Note XIII.




READING WIDELY.           IO1
and vigorous quick-step which one always wants
in speaking to men, with an earnest conviction,
but without any notes. There is great benefit,
therefore, in such reading; and the impulse and
stimulus which one carries away from it are of
more importance than many minor particulars
of knowledge.
Read widely, too; history, science, philosophy,
poetry, works on law, works on art, as well as
discussions in metaphysics. Do not read too
exclusively in theology. The man who confines
himself wholly to that develops only a part of
his mind; keeps only a certain set of faculties
in exercise and training. He is apt to get an
eye like a microscopic lens, fine in its distinctions, not wide in its range. What the minister
needs, who would speak to men effectively, is the
widest development. He should keep his mind,
therefore, in quickening contact with other
minds, in many and various departments of
thought. Only eschew fiction; or use it, if at all,
in great moderation. As a general thing, it




102     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
doesn't help. It rather relaxes and ungirds the
mind; acts as a laxative, or an anaesthetic, rather
than as a real invigorant.
I do not know that I should go so far as to
insist on your following precisely the example
of an excellent friend of mine, who once
read David Copperfield, when he had a tough
toothache, and who afterward said to the gentleman who had furnished it that he did not
know whether he had done right or not, but certainly he had not read any other work of fiction
for twenty years; not since he read Bunyan's
Holy War! But I should say, read it very
little; in vacation, if at all, or in time of recreation, and not when you are actively at work.
And when you read, read only the masters, -
Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, Scott, and the like;
and let the great herd of writers of stories go
their way. They bring no profit.  Keep the
mind braced - that is the rule — by contact
with large and disciplinary subjects, as treated by
vigorous and liberal minds; and accustom your



STIMULUS OF CONVERSATION.       103
selves to a swift and thorough redaction of subjects as you read. But do not read to the point
of weariness. Absorb and assimilate as much
as you can, but never undertake to carry the
burden of multitudes of things to be afterward
remembered.  The force is what you want,
rather than the load.*
Conversation, too, with equal minds, is of immense and constant service in refreshing the
mind, and replenishing it with active force.
Indeed, conversation, if practised as it ought to
be, as a commerce of thought between responsive and interchanging minds, is an invaluable
aid toward gaining the art of easy and self-possessed public speech. I do not think we have
as much of it as we ought; or that it holds the
place which it should in our plans of life, as a real
educational force. It is much the same exercise,
if you analyze it, with public speaking. Of course
it is not the same altogether. In public speech
your utterance of thought is more prolonged: it
* Note XIV.




104     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
is monologue, not dialogue. You miss the help
which comes from interjected remarks or replies; and you are not so immediately conscious
of the sympathy or the collision of the adjacent
minds. Still, conversation is much the same
form of mental activity; and it always helps the
public speaker. It trains the mind to think rapidly, and to formulate thought with facility and
success; and each sense of such success, which
is gained in conversation, will give one more
confidence when he stands before an audience.
Instead of talking to ten persons, you are there
to talk to five hundred; but the one exercise has
helped for the other, as singing in a parlor helps
to sing in a choir, or as shooting with an air-gun,
at ten paces, helps one to shoot straight with a
rifle, at a hundred. One who is silent, secluded,
all the week, without contact with men, had
better always read his sermons. He will be certainly timorous, and self-conscious, when Sunday
comes; afraid of other minds, except as they
speak to him through books. But one who has




VARIETY OF WORK.          105
the opportunity, and uses it, of energetic and
frank conversation, on important subjects, with
equal minds, will be reinforced by it, and will be
sure to come to his pulpit more ripe and ready
for his work, more confident of his power to
atter thought without having written it.
Variety of work, too, assists this result. I
mean, of course, variety of work within reasonable limits. I shouldn't advise you, when you
come to be ministers, to undertake any wholly
superfluous work like this of mine - giving lectures to young gentlemen who already have professors to tell them more than their heads can
hold!  But aside from  such absurd excess,
within reasonable limits, the more various a
man's work is, the more likely he is to keep his
mind in an animated, active, and forceful state.
When some one spoke, you know, to Dr. Lyman
Beecher of a man who'had too many irons in
the fire,' his reply was,'Nonsense! let him put
them all in: poker, tongs, shovel, and all. It
never will hurt him.' The fact that he himself




0o6     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
was always so ready for any work, which promised important Christian success, was in part the
secret of that commanding and quickening
power which he possessed so largely and so
long. Variety of occupation sets the spirit in a
glow. It relieves one faculty by exercising another. It keeps all forces alert and ready, and
tends to make one ambi-dextrous.*
With this variety of work, this habit of conversation, this rapid and wide reading, one may
at any rate keep his mind at as high a state of
freshness and energy as is to him possible.
And in that state it is easy to speak one's
thought to others.  Then the stimulus of the
audience only further assists him. When he
comes to his congregation, and sees the eager
listening faces upturned toward his, perhaps sees
the flush or the tear as he speaks, there is immense incentive in it.  He may then reach
points of vision and power impossible to be
attained in the study. He may even reproduce,
* Note XV.




RESULT OF SUCH TRAINING.      107
in a measure, the experience of the eloquent
preacher in this city, not of our faith, who is
said to have said that when he had reached a certain occasional pitch of intensity, in conviction
and feeling, he had nothing more to do with the
sermon than just to open and shut his jaws.'There is a little fellow up there in the brain
who does the rest; and where it all comes frovr
I hardly know.'
Then the mind walks on its high places. It
works automatically, and with sovereign force,
without constraint or urgency of volition. The
man himself is amazed at the rush with which
both thought and utterance come. The reserved
forces all break into play. Things are at hand,
which had seemed inaccessible. Previous knowledge is as if transfigured. The whole spirit is
full of energy, full of light. It rejoices to re.
veal itself, in action and in speech; and its
words are instinct with brightness and power.
Such moods will only come of themselves.
They cannot be summoned by an effort of will,




IO8     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
any more than you can make a cold day warmer
by heating the thermometer. But they come
only to minds prepared for them, by such a dis.
cipline as I have suggested. And when they
come, you have the sense, as at no other time, of
doing your kingly errand in the world for One
who is Himself speaking through you —through
the mind which, in all its intensified powers, is
subordinate to His! When a congregation has
once felt the luxury and the exhilaration of such
an experience they will never be content until
it has been repeated.*
Then, THIRDLY: Be careful that the plan of
your sermon is simple, natural, progressive, easily
mastered, and is thoroughly imbedded in your
mind.- This seems to me indispensable.
If there is any secret in regard to speaking
freely without notes, which I have learned, it is
simply this: that the recollective forces of the
mind, which are in their nature subordinate and
auxiliary, are to be kept strictly in abeyance -
# Note XVI.




PLAN OF THE SERMON.          IO9
not to be called on for any service -so that the
spontaneous, suggestive, creative powers may
have continual and unhindered play. Nothing,
if possible, should be left to be recalled at the
time of speaking, by a distinct act of memory.
The more you try to recollect, the less effective
your sermon will be. The more frequently you
have to look backward, in the course of it, the
less aggressive productive energy will remain in
your mind; and it is this, if any thing, which is
to win and to move the assembly.
It is indispensable, therefore, that the main
plan of the sermon be from the start so plainly
in view that it comes up of itself, as it is needed,
and does not require to be pulled into sight with
any effort. To this end, it must be simple,
obvious, natural, so that it fixes itself in the
mind; and must be clearly articulated in its
parts. If possible, let it be so arranged that one
point naturally leads to another, ana, when the
treatment of it is finished, leaves you in front of
that which comes next. Then take up that, and




I IO    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
treat it in its order, until, through that treatment,
you reach the third, and find it inevitable to
proceed to consider that. By such a progressive
arrangement of thought you are yourself carried
forward; your faculties have continual liberty;
you are not forced to pause in the work of
addressing yourself directly to the people.
Of course you may secure this in either one
of a variety of ways.
You may get it, for example, by a strictly
textual division of the sulject, when the structure
of your text admits of that. Take Paul's declaration, for example, in his epistle to the Romans:
[viii. 28.] "And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose."
"We know:" what right had Paul to speak
thus, with such supreme certainty? Because
he had been assured of it by God, and had found
it verified in his experience. We may rest on his
knowledge, and make it ours. " All things:"
all facts, and forces, and laws of the universe,




TEXTUAL DIVISION.         II I
from the smallest animalcule to the star Alcyone: what a measureless compass in this declara.
tion! "Work:" nothing is inactive, all things,
and all beings, under God's ordination, are in
motion for effects. "Work together:" in harmony with each other, as all proceeding from
one Divine mind, and moving in the development of one supreme plan. " Work together for
good:" the beneficence of all in the final result;
such as must be anticipated, since He from
whom they start is good, and He cannot do
otherwise than manifest His character in the
ends toward which the universe tends. But it
is for good "to them that love Him:" to those
who are in union, by moral sympathy, with the
Head of the creation, having been lifted and
inspired to that sympathy by His inviting and
quickening grace.
The text itself suggests the succession of the
divisions, if you choose so to treat it; and each
following word is the fulcrum of an argument.
And then the practical lessons come, just as




'I 2    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
naturally: of comfort to those who are in trouble;
of courage and enterprise to those who are trying
to work for God; of assurance of hope, to those
who are consciously allied to Him, through
joyful and affectionate faith in His Son. - There
is nothing here to be laboriously recalled. It
presents itself, as fast as you want it; and you
could not forget it, if you tried.
Or, you may reach the same result by a topical
division of the subject, if you prefer that. Take,
for example, another declaration of the same
great Apostle, in his letter to the Colossians:
[i. 14.] " In whom we have redemption through
his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." - There
is a consciousness of sin in every man; of
omission, at least, if not of wrong-doing; of
defect in virtue, if not of a fierce and virulent
depravity. With this comes the conscious need
of forgiveness, which is the inevitable correlative
of the other, and will be apparent to all who are
thoughtful. Is there any answer then, on the
part of God to this need of ours?  Several




TOPICAL DIVISION.          I 13
answers are current in the world, and challenge
attention.
It is said, for example, that He never forgives;
He cannot, in the nature of the case.  Moral
forces work as irresistibly, moral laws are as
inexorable, as those which rule in the physical
world. The man who breaks law must take the
consequences. The morally poisoned cannot be
helped. — This is the positivist, the deistical
idea. It is a terrible response to our keen and
tremulous sense of need.
Another is, that He forgives capriciously:
those who have been born of good parents; those
who have lived in Christian society; who have
had a fortunate mental constitution; who have
been influential; who have not done any thing
flagrantly bad; —such are forgiven, though no
change of character is manifest in them. This
is an answer, if possible, still more terrible than
the other; since the man unforgiven is discrimi.
nated against, in favor of one who had a better
opportunity. That cannot be admitted.




I 14    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
A third answer is, that He forgives universally, without reference to circumstances, without distinction of character, because He is
kind: and this is the worst conception of all. —
For by it all moral law is annulled, and chaos
comes in the spiritual universe; God himself
losing the bright attestation of His holiness;
Mary Magdalen sitting in heaven beside Herodias; the two thieves entering its gates together,
and Judas appearing there long before John. It
is incredible that this should be the answer.
The remaining one is the answer of the Gospel, summed up in the text: that God forgives;
forgives not capriciously, but with wise, definite,
and Divine pre-arrangement; forgives universally, on the ground of an atonement, and on
the condition of repentance and faith. -This
answer shows God's kindness, holiness, wisdom,
together, and fully illustrates what is glorious in
Him. It fits precisel) to man's sense of need.
It makes forgiveness attainable to each, while
upholding perfectly the supreme moral order.




PROGRESSIVE ARRANGEMENT.       I 15
And from it we learn the preciousness of the
Bible, and gain an argument for its Divine
origin; the privilege of accepting God's offer
of forgiveness; the infinite hazard, the selfinflicted damage, of neglecting or refusing it.
You will observe, Gentlemen, that I am not
proposing this, or either of these, as in any
sense a model-plan for one of your sermons.
You have an eminent professor to do that, and
I could not attempt the office, if I were asked.
I only sketch rapidly these possible plans to
illustrate, by examples, what I have said: that it
is perfectly possible, and very desirable, so to
arrange the subject before you that each point
when treated shall lead you to the next, and land
you in front of it; so that the forward movement of the mind, from first to last, may be
wholly unhindered. You require a thorough
organization of the subject in your own mind,
if you are to present it without a manuscript,
with any degree of freedom and vigor. There
must be method and progress in your arrange



I6     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
ment, or the mind will infallibly be all the while
occupied in getting hold of its instruments, not
in using them on the people.
It has been said, very admirably, of one
brilliant and epigrammatic writer of our day,
that "his sentences are like sabre-cuts: they
have succession, but not connection." Such a
writer, I should think, must read what he writes,
or repeat it from memory. There must be connection, as well as succession, in the thoughts
which one would express without notes; and
the more fully and deeply the plan of the discourse is imbedded in the mind, and made selfsuggestive, the more elastic and buoyant is the
tread of the mind in all the discussion.
If needful to this result, I would write the plan
of the sermon over twenty times, before preaching it; not copying, merely, from one piece of
paper upon another, but writing it out, carefully
and fully, each time independently, till I perfectly knew it; till it was fixed, absolutely, in
the mind. A German, called as a candidate foi




THE PLAN FULLY IN MIND.        I I7
the jury-box in one of the courts the other day,
was asked if he could change, on further evidence, an opinion which he affirmed that he had
formed. "No," said he, "I cannot change it, for
it is all mixed up mit my mind!"  The plan of
a discourse, if one is to present it without help
from a manuscript, should be so absolutely
mixed up with his mind that he cannot forget
At; that it stays there of itself, and comes up
without effort as it is wanted. One may often
profitably spend more time, therefore, on the
principal arrangement of the subject, and its
proper distribution, than on all the collateral
and auxiliary details; as they say that more life,
if not more labor, was spent on the piles beneati
the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac's, te
get a foundation, than on all the magnificent
marbles and malachite which have since been
lodged in it. It must be a primary, principal
aim, in preparing each discourse, to have the
ground~work sound and sure, and absolutely
established in your mind




I I8    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
It need not be made apparent, perhaps, to the
congregation. It is not always best, I think, to
have the frame of a sermon like the frame of a
Swiss cottage, all shown on the outside. It may
be better to keep it within, and to have the
presence and the strength of it manifested only
in the dignity and stability of the structure
which it braces and governs. But it must be
there, and give symmetry and security to all the
details which grow up upon it.* Saadi, the Persian poet, is quoted by some writer whom I have
forgotten, as comparing Fortune to a peacock,
"with a showy tail, but a frightful pair of legs."
I have sometimes heard sermons which recalled
the description. The general arrangement of
thoughts in your sermon will constitute the
legs, on which it is to move. Be very sure that
they are strong, sustaining, progressive; and
then let the tail be as God pleases.
When once you have the main plan of the
sermon fully in mind, be not too solicitous about
* Note XVII.




SERMON ALWAYS FRESH.        I I9
minor things, and especially be careful not to
let the thoughts become engaged to too many
details, which you wish to recall. If you do, you
will be as one walking with a thousand minute
weights attached to him, each one of them small,
but their aggregate amount an overpowering
hinderance. It is as good a rule in preaching a
sermon as it is in living the Christian life:
"lay aside every weight;" every thing, that is,
which catches you as with a hook; and the
habit of remembering, which so easily winds
itself about you; and, being sure of your general
governing scheme of thought, let the details, of
illustration and expression, be largely those
which suggest themselves, either in consequence
of previous thought, or without that.
Then if you preach the sermon a second time
the hearers will find in it the same general plan,
but a different physiognomy. The filling out of
the plan will be so different - in forms of statement, subordinate thoughts, illustrative images
or examples - that the effect of it will be wholly




120     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
new. The sermon re-preached will be substan
tially as fresh as at first. A clergyman lately
deceased, in New England, is reported to have
said that' an old sermon, with a new text, and a
new application, is as good as a new one, because
of its new collar and cuffs.' But if you follow
my different plan, and have the same text, if
you like, and the same outline, but with such
different subordinate thoughts, whenever you
preach, as are then suggested -accepting them
as they come, integrating them with the discourse as you proceed —the sermon will be
always practically a new one; as related to your
mind, as related to your hearers. It will have
the same bones, but with a different covering, a
different coloring, and in fact a wholly fresh and
individual life.
Still further, and FOURTHLY: After this care
of your health of body, and your energy of mind,
and this careful mastery of the general plan to be
followed in the sermon, it is necessary also that
you havte command of sufficient subordinate




KEEP THE MIND FREE.        121
trains of thought to aid you in unfolding and
impressing the subject. - Have images in mind,
illustrative instances, whatever may be needed
to set forth, exalt, enforce your theme.  But
never suffer yourselves to be commanded by
them. Be always careful to keep yourselves free
from any such subjection to them that you will
feel bound to recall and reproduce them.
The distinction here is the very obvious and
familiar distinction between voluntary recollection, which always implies effort, and involuntary
recollection, where things come up to us'of
themselves,' as we say. It is the latter by which
we should aid ourselves in preaching, not the
former. There are many things which we recall
only by a positive exertion; names, dates, the
location of unfamiliar towns on the map, the
technics of any art, the scientific nomenclature;
in general, any thing unconnected and new. Unless my memory deceives me, one of your professors was beginning the study of Hebrew with
me in the seminary, when the professor having




122     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
charge of the class wrote some disconnected
characters from the Hebrew alphabet on the
black-board, — Aleph, Daleth, Samech, Tsade,
and so on,  taking them at hazard, as they
occurred to him; and our friend was suddenly
asked to pronounce them. After looking a moment he was compelled to confess that, though he
knew the old Hebrew gentlemen by sight, to save
his life he could not yet call them by name. He
got so afterward that he could call them by name,
with instant accuracy; and it is wholly unnecessary to praise the progress in that acquaintance
which he has since made, or the use he has made
of it. But at that early time, to recall them, on
the instant, was quite beyond him.
There are other things, however, which one
recalls without the slightest conscious effort;
which picture themselves upon his mind, with a
vividness ineffaceable, and which reappear when
he least is expecting them. The Sistine Madonna, the Transfiguration, some charming Swiss
or Ttaliar landscape with lake and mountains, a




INVOLUNTARY RECOLLECTION.      123
sunset at sea, the face of a friend - these do not
need to be summoned back. They present themselves without our call; and sometimes rise up
most distinctly when the thoughts had seemed
entirely preoccupied with other things. When
the mind is in a fervent and stimulated state, such
things occur to it, and a multitude of others, most
rapidly and surely. They come in throngs, one
suggesting another, all pushing on swiftly for
recognition, and if need be for use.
Now it is this involuntary, spontaneous, selfsuggesting recollection, by which one who speaks
without notes must be aided; and the process
of training it to render such assistance is very
simple.
In the case of a sermon, for example: as you
first think the subject carefully through, subordinate trains of thought will occur, illustrating
the main one; passages in literature will be suggested, perhaps; historical examples; Scriptural
analogies; scenes in nature, or startling passages
in personal experience; all bearing upon the sub




124     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
ject, and which rise to your mind in instant and
fit connection with it.* It is well, I think, to make
a brief memorandum of such, indicating them at
least by a line or a catch-word on the brief.
When you go through the subject again, say on
Saturday evening, some of these will again occur,
and' others will not; but in place of those which
do not come back, if your mind is in an active
and a fruitful condition, others will suggest
themselves. Now look at your notes, and add
references to these, noticing again what you previously had thought of, but have now overlooked.
Thus you have at a glance before you all that
has been suggested to your mind, in connection
with the subject. It will be almost certainly
more than enough to fill your sermon; and when
you finally recall it, in the morning, whatever is
best in it will be likely to come back.
Then go and preach; and, in the pulpit, that
which had previously approved itself to your
mind as fit, striking, germane to the subject,
* Note XVIII.




NEV1~R STOP TO RECALL.       I25
will again almost certainly be suggested, coming up after its own law, and often in the very
words in which it first was presented to the
mind. Then give it as it comes. Never stop to
recall any thing which you are vaguely and
doubtfully conscious of having purposed to say,
but which has somehow slipped from your
thought. The pause is perilous; and you probably will not get back what you miss. You have
seen a boy, perhaps, pushing his arm between
the pickets of a fence to get the round and rolling foot-ball which has fallen beyond it. He can
just touch the ball with his fingers, but cannot
grasp it; and the moment he presses it, off it
rolls. So it is, often, with the thought which
a speaker tries to recover, when he has passed
it. It slips away again the instant you reach
for it, and will not come back; while, in the effort
to regain it, you have lost your hold upon the
congregation.
Men are not responsive to an introverted;mipd. You never notice, yourselves, what an




126     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
absent-minded man is saying to you; it is sound,
without thought in it. And if your mind is not
with the people, but hunting for something back
of yourself, you might much better be saying
nothing. There is nothing an audience more
enjoys than being directly and forcibly addressed,
by a full mind, which has studied its subject, and
now is pouring out its thought without hesitation, without reserve. But they recoil, and slip
from the grasp, the moment they see that your
principal effort is to recall things, not to impress
things already in mind. They love to be commanded; but they hate the cowardice which
springs from a memory imperfect and uneasy.
So avoid this peril. Have plenty of thoughts
beforehand in your mind, but let them come to
your lips as they will; and if they don't come,
never go back for them. They will come again,
at some other time; and meantime others which
very likely are better, will come in theil place,
if you go forward. Lord Brougham said of
Burke that his finest images are not those which




DR. KIRK S ILLUSTRATION.      127
he had meditated beforehand, but those which
were struck from his intense mind in the heat of
debate:'like sparks from a working engine, and
not like fire-works for mere display.' One can
never repeat such passages afterward, with the
vividness and force which belonged to them at
first. The inspiration of the occasion, which
shot its force through them, cannot be replaced.
Dr. Kirk, in the earlier years of that part of
his ministry which followed his return from
Europe, was wont to preach without full notes,
though I think he always used some in the pulpit. Once, when he was preaching at Pittsfield,
a gentleman who was sitting in the gallery has
told me that he described, toward the end of his
sermon, the way of worldly pleasure and gain,
without thought of God, as a smooth broad road,
along whose easy and gradual slopes men carelessly walked, till they came on a sudden to the
precipice at the end; and so vivid was the final
image, as it flashed from his mind upon the
assembly, that when he depicted them going over




128     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
the edge, a rough-looking man, who sat next to
my friend, rose in his place, and looked over the
gallery-front, to see the chasm into which they
were falling! The whole figure had doubtless
come with a rush to the mind of the preacher.
It was as vivid to Dr. Kirk, on the instant of its
utterance, as it was to this hearer. The whole
swing of the sermon was behind it, as it leaped
into speech; and it could not have been repeated,
with any thing of the same effect. An effort to
reproduce it, afterward, would have been like cutting the flower from stalk and root, to brighten
other days with its beauty. What at first was
spontaneous, would have then been a matter of
mere art and mechanics.
So never go back to remember things, which do
not spontaneously come up to your mind while
you are speaking. Make as full preparation as
you can, but leave it if it lingers. Let the push
of your soul be in all that you say, and every
sentence be charged with the vitality of an ad.
vancing and out-giving mind.




THE MIND READY FOR WORK.    129
Next week I shall speak of some of the moral
and spiritual conditions of success in preaching
without one's notes. What I have to say to-day
closes here. If you have within you the inspir.
ing conviction that the Gospel has come from the
mind of God, and is indispensable to the welfare
of man; if you are then careful to keep your whole
physical vigor at the highest attainable point, and
to keep your mind in a state of corresponding activity and energy; if you make the plan
of your sermon simple and natural, and imbed it
in your thoughts, so that the mind in treating the
subject naturally runs along on that plan, without
effort or care, and is all the while free, ready for
whatever suggestions may come; if you have
sufficient command of subordinate trains of
thought, of illustrations, images, historical in.
stances, germane to the subject, but are not
yourself commanded by them, and are ready to
take them or to leave them according as at the
moment they recur, or fail to appear;- then you
have, I think, the essential physical and mental




130     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
conditions of that success which is possible for
you. You may speak then with freedom, force,
pleasure, and with direct and useful effect on the
minds you address; with more effect, I suspect,
oftentimes, than if you read a careful essay.
So fulfil these conditions, Gentlemen: and then
follow the advice which Jehoshaphat gave, when
he set of the priests and the chief of the fathers to be judges in Israel, and gave them their
motto, - among the grandest, I think, in all history; certainly there is none like it in the
Kaiser-saal at Frankfurt, under all the portraits
of German emperors which there are assembled,
— "Deal courageously; and the Lord shall be
with the good I "




THIRD LECTURE.
Mr. President: Young Gentlemen: —
IN each of these talks to you I illustrate in
myself, as I am quite aware, one of the disadvantages connected with the practice of speaking without notes; a  disadvantage which
becomes especially noticeable, and especially
important, when one has a large subject to present, the treatment of which must be compressed into a comparatively small space of
time.
I have been conscious every time, after
speaking to you, that there were many things
which I had not touched, of which I should
have been glad to speak if the hour had
permitted, and if I had not spoken under the
131




132     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
pressure of its sharp limitations.  I feel the
same thing more keenly to-day, because each of
the points which I have to present is deserving
of special and separate treatment, and might
reasonably occupy a full hour by itself: while I
have to present them all within the same limits,
or as near that as I can. It seems like trying
to squeeze the thousand volumes of a library
into one book-case: or to pack the entire furniture of a room in a couple of trunks.
I shall be constrained to treat the subjects rapidly, cursorily, in a way which I fear will seem to
your minds, as well as to my own, unsatisfactory.
But I have no alternative, having no other afternoons on which I could properly ask you to hear
me, or, indeed, on which I could promise to
meet you here. I must therefore do briefly, in
a summary way, what it would be pleasanter to
do more at leisure, with larger scope; since
whatever I am to say must be finished to-day.
In the last talk I spoke, as you will remember,
of certain physical and mental conditions of




CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS.        133
success in preaching without one's manuscript.
These are, all of them, important in themselves.
But they become still more important as con.
nected with others, moral and spiritual, which
are to them ulterior and supreme. First comes
always, in God's arrangement, that which is
natural; and, afterward, that which is spiritual.
The conditions which I have to-day to present
stand in this Divine order; and they come last
because they are highest. They are not, indeed,
important only to one who speaks without his
notes. They are important also, perhaps as
much so, to one who carefully writes his sermons.
But they are indispensable to the first; and it is
his need, his proper self-discipline and equip.
ment of mind, which I am trying to set before
you. I should leave the whole subject, therefore, most inadequately treated, if I did not proceed to speak of these, as I intend to do today.
The FIRST of them which I specify is this:
One should have a distinct and an energetic




134     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
sense of the importance of that particular subject
on which he is to preach at the time.
I said, at the beginning of the lecture last
week, that the minister should have, as a necessary pre-requisite to any real success whatever,
a serious, paramount, inspiring sense of the
Divine origin and authority of the Gospel, and of
its transcendent importance to men. This is
indispensable to success in preaching, either with
notes or without them. Unless one has it, it
is hard to see why he should enter the ministry
it all; and if he does, he will be almost certain
to fail, -not understanding his own errand in
the world, and not having his forces fully drawn
forth by the truth which he presents.
I do not now repeat, you observe, what I then
said; but I add to it this essential particular,
that he should have also a distinct, animating,
inspiring impression of the importance of that
individual subject upon which he is at the time
to preach - of the theme which he has immedi.
ately in hand.




IMPORTANCE OF SUBJECTS.        135
It has such importance, if it is really a part of
the Gospel; and if it is not, he ought not to
bring it to the pulpit at all. As compared with
other truths embraced in the great complex har.
mony of Revelation, it may not have a superior,
possibly not even an equal, importance. There
are orders and hierarchies in the Divine realms,
both of being and of truth. Not every doctrine
is so fundamental as is that of human depravity.
Not every fact is so central in the Gospel as is
that of the Passion and the Cross. Not every
truth is so dominant and supreme as is that of
the Judgment to come. It is not every particular
in the life of the Lord which has such importance in itself, or such a power to quicken us, as
has the Resurrection. It is not every one of
the Psalms which is so attractive or so impressive
to the Christian heart as is the twenty-third or
the fifty-first.
At the same time it is true that, as compared
with the subjects which ordinarily engage the
attention of men, any theme suggested by the




136     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
Gospel to the mind of the preacher - which is
itself a part of that Gospel - has an intrinsic, a
continuing, a surpassing importance. It is a
part of the whole structure, as is every part of
the stately column, —base, shaft, capital, and the
very volutes upon it. It is important to all the
rest, as is every member of the human frame,
- the eye, the ear, the finger, and the foot,
as well as the nobler heart and brain. It is a
part of the Divine word; one of God's thoughts,
which He has spoken to the world, through men
inspired of the Holy Ghost. And if it was worth
while for Him to speak it, certainly it is worth
while for us each one to meditate upon it, and
proclaim it to others.
It has, too, its own great office to accomplish.
It is one of the instruments which God means
to use for quickening and renewing the souls of
men; which is in fact used, by the Spirit of God,
for that august end. Whether, therefore, it seem
to us more or less important in itself, if employed
for that sublime result it has immense and im.




THE HUMBLEST TRUTH USEFUL.   I37
mortal value  and you can never say before
hand whether this or that particular truth shall
be the means which God will use. Sometimes
He takes the humblest truth, as it looks to us,
and makes it most efficient to accomplish His
end. The rod of Moses had no power in itself
to roll back the waves, or to make them again
return in strength; but God gave it such power.
The mantle of Elijah had no charm in itself to
divide the waters of Jordan when it smote them;
but God gave it its efficiency. And sometimes,
as if to magnify his grace, and set forth most
fully the glory and the choice of His sovereign
will, He makes what seems to man unimportant
the instrument of His greatest work. A narrative may do more than a large and careful development of doctrine. A portrait of character, or
of any trait in it, may bless men more than precept, or argument, or an elaborate exposition of
prophecy. What seems the least becomes often
the mightiest, when the push of God's Spirit is
behind it.




138     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
Always, therefore, remember that the special
truth which you are to treat has importance in
itself, and may be the instrument in the Hand
above for accomplishing the work toward which
your entire labor is tending; and then engage
your mind to it for the time, as if no other subject existed. Keep it in distinct and quickening
contemplation. Be the'man of one idea,' till
your sermon is ended; and let that idea be the
one before you.
It is not difficult to do this. All that you
need is to hold the subject before your thoughts
until its relation to God's mind, on the one hand,
and to His revelation, and on the other to the
minds of your hearers, is evident to you, and you
have felt the impression of it. It is one of the
best tests of a subject, of its intrinsic solidity and
value, if it will bear such intent and continuing
meditation. If it will, it will bear discussion in
the pulpit. You may throw your whole weight
on it, without diffidence or reserve. But if it
shrinks, as you consider it, gives way, shows




TEST OF A SUBJECT.          139
weakness, depend upon it it is some theory of your
own, which has not the validity that belongs to
God's truth. Take the iron-pyrites. It sparkles
like gold, and you think for the moment that it
is gold, perhaps. But when you lift it in your
hand, it is light. When you touch it with the
fire of chemical analysis, you detect the fumes
of sulphur in it; while the gold, with no more
gleam on its surface, is solid and pure. In like
manner, take a subject, look at it on all sides,
hold it before your attentive scrutiny, till you
have ascertained all that is in it; and then, if it
still satisfies your mind, and quickens your heart,
it is a subject to preach upon.
Nor is it at all dangerous to do this. It is
sometimes objected that a preacher will become
one-sided and narrow, will preach only on a
given set of subjects, if he follows this method,
of absorbing himself for the time altogether in
the theme which is before him. But ther/e is not
half so much danger of this in preaching without
a manuscript as with one. I have known one




1 40    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
man who preached so long on the doctrine of
Sin that there seemed no room remaining in his
mind for the promise of Salvation; and another
who preached upon Fore-ordination, till one was
really tempted to apply to him the rough remark
of Robert Hall about a minister who did the
same thing in the neighborhood of Bristol —
that' he must have been fore-ordained, from all
eternity, to be a fool.' And I have known one
who preached upon Baptism, himself a paedo-baptist, till the people were not only showered but
soaked with it. Each one of these men wrote
his sermons!
You will remember, perhaps, what I said in
my first talk, a fortnight ago, about the necessity
of discharging the mind of each subject, successively, when it has been treated; of putting
it thoroughly out of your thoughts, and taking
another in its place. This is difficult, certainly;
especially at first. But it can be accomplished;
and one can form the habit of doing it, till it
shall be easy, and a matter of course. Do this,




THE SUBJECT TO BE SPECIFIC.    I41
then, regularly. When you have preached on one
subject divest your mind of it, and take another.
In that way treat each subject, as it occurs,
amply, cordially, eagerly, with enthusiasm, with
the whole force of your mind and your will
centred upon it for the time; and as, by degrees,
you go the round of that great system which lies
before you in the Scripture, ultimately you will
have treated, with fulness and force, the whole
circle of Christian truth, precept, and promise.
If your subject, for example, is the nature of
faith, keep it specific. Do not allow it to become mixed in your thought with any thing
else. Conceive in your own mind, and show to
others, precisely what it is - this penitent and
loving confidence in God, who is declared to us
in Christ; which has in it the element of power
and holiness, and which is the condition of life
eternal. Have it as clear before yourselves, make
it as clear before your hearers, as was the out.
line of Grace Church tower and spire to me a
few minutes since, as I walked up Broadway.




142     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
Or, if your subject is the power of faith, treat
that as distinctly; until the essential heroism of
spirit of which it is the parent comes vividly
before you and your people; till they see that
faith is everywhere the real heroic and conquering force- that which drives the explorer
through thick-ribbed ice of Arctic seas; that
which sends the traveller through tangled forests,
malarious swamps, and stony deserts of Central
Africa; that which pushed Columbus across the
sea to find this continent, in spite of the constant fears of his sailors that if he went further
his ship would slide over the rim of the planet.
Faith is the true power of heroism, over the
world; not in religion only, but in all common
and secular affairs. It gives the power that
moves mankind. Dwell upon that, then, in your
thoughts, and make it plain and palpable to
others, till they with you cannot help but see the
connection there is, and the reason of the connection, between evangelical faith on earth and the
vision on high — the hope to which it here




EACH SUBJECT IN TURN.        143
inspires, the heaven which there it swiftly
opens.
So if your subject be one of those specific
graces which Peter commands to be added to
faith - courage, knowledge, self-restraint, patient
endurance- either of those which he would
have led up by the Christian, hand in hand, as
in the Greek chorus: consider it with discriminating attention; treat it distinctively; show its
relation to the entrance which shall by-and-by be
richly ministered, as by a chorus of saints and
angels, into the kingdom of God's glory. If it
be a doctrine, of human depravity: feel it yourselves, and make others feel it; the depth, the
energy, the consequences of it. So, equally, if
it be regeneration, atonement; or if it be only
a prophecy that you interpret, a biography that
you sketch, a passage in history on which you
throw light, a parable whose meaning you interpret. Whatever your subject be, let it be for
the time the one engrossing subject of your
mind; and until you have preached on it let




144     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
nothing come in to divert in the least attention
freon it.
Carlyle says somewhere, in his half-cynical
fashion, that " the candid judge will in general
require that a speaker, in so extremely serious a
universe as this of ours, have something to speak
about."* It is a good rule. Your congregation
will hold you to it; and the only way to meet
their just and constant demand upon you is by
having the mind thus centred upon a subject,
filled with its meaning, made alive with its influence.
Here is one vital advantage in preaching without one's notes before him. I said in my first
talk that there was a certain disadvantage in this,
in the matter of exchanges; because these do
not give the relief, when the manuscript is wanting, which they otherwise would. But there is a
greater disadvantage, so far as the congregation
is concerned, in using the essay. No enthusiasm
may go with it, or out from it upon others. A
* Miscellanies, vol. iv. p. 311; review of Scott's Life




INTEREST THUS KINDLED.       I45
sermon which is read, without having been reabsorbed in the mind, never has vital virtue in it.
I have heard such read in my own pulpit - manuscript sermons, yellow with time; and, while I
would not undertake to set bounds to God's omnipotence, I have said to myself as the reading
went on,' there is not the least natural tendency
in a thousand such sermons to convert a mouse.'
But if you follow the course I have outlined, and
throw your whole enthusiasm for the time into
the subject which you are treating, when you are
abroad as when you are at home, there will no
doubt be labor in it, but the labor will bring its
great reward, in the glory of God, and the good
of those whom you address.
Three years ago, on a beautiful Easter Sunday,
I went into an Anglican Chapel in France, and
heard a sermon, of fifteen or eighteen minutes'
length, on the Lord's Resurrection.  At the
close, the preacher said: " And now if there be
any among you who to-day have come hither
simply upon the cold legs of custom, then" -




I46     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
so and so. I thought it not an impressive address, considering the brightness and warmth of
the day, and that many of us were there for the
first time in our life. But I say to you, Young
Gentlemen: If any of you ever go into the pulpit'simply upon the cold legs of custom,' be very
careful to take a manuscript with you. But if
you go to speak to the assembly because your
mind is full of the truth, and you long to impart
that truth to them, for their sakes and for God's
sake, - then charge your mind with it, and speak
it with all the force you can give it, without any
notes.
And SECONDLY: To speak freely and usefully
without notes one should have, from the very
beginning of his discourse, distinctly in view,
a definite end, of practical impression, which his
discourse is to make and leave on the minds be.
fote him. - He must speak for a purpose; and
the purpose must propel and govern the sermon.
Of course this is not peculiar to unwritten
sermons Every sermon should have such an




PRACTICAL IMPRESSION OF TRUTH.  147
end, of practical impression, present from the
outset to him who prepares it, both while he is
preparing and when he is preaching it. But this
is absolutely indispensable to one who is to preach
without aid from notes. Otherwise the force of
his moral nature will never be enlisted in the
work he has in hand.
Your venerable Presbyterian Form of Government says —or the Introduction to it says
- that "Truth is in order to goodness."  I do
not live under that Form of Government precisely, and so perhaps I should prefer to modify
somewhat that form of expression. Truth, I
take it, is in its essence the reality of things;
and truth, in expression, is the representation of
that reality. It does not exist, therefore, I suppose, with reference to any thing ulterior to
itself. It is,' whether or no;' without regard to
consequences. But certainly Truth is declared
to us, the Divine Truth, in order to its specific
impression upon life and character; and that, I
take it, is really the import of this statement




148      PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
The whole Bible bears on practical results; and
here is one great secret of its power. In this,
as in other things, it is unique and supreme in
the world's literature. It is not a mere collection
of interesting biographies, historical narratives,
precepts, arguments, proverbs, songs; but it all
bears, from first to last, on definite results, - the
conversion of men to God, their upbuilding in
righteousness. Whoever preaches, then, on
themes derived by him from the Bible, should
have the same end distinctly in view.*
It is necessary, as I said, in order to enlist his
moral nature, ardently, thoroughly, in the work
he has to do. Intellectual excitement is rela.
tively without warmth. Intellectual enthusiasm,
for a proposition which has no special practical
relation to those to whom it is being presented,
never has the force of real passion in it. The
heating power in the nature of man is in its
moral element. This gives the inward glow and
vividness to all his intellectual processes, when it
* Note XIX.




AN INTELLECTUAL STIMULANT.    I49
inspires them. Power and impulse always come
from it.
The desire after practical usefulness is, therefore, indispensable to one who would preach well
without his notes. He may be logical, in the
absence of it; but his will never be "logic on
fire," till his moral nature has clearly in view an
end toward which it is steadily working, pushing
the instrumental intellectual force, till that also
glows with it.
The minister requires this, also, as an intellectual corrective and stimulant; to give unity
to his discourse, progressiveness, steadiness,
and an easy celerity, to his mental operations.
Without it, he will be like the ship tossing on the
waves, hither and yon, in the darkness of a fog.
The fog lifts; the headland, or the light, appears;
and instantly the ship swings into her course.
Instead of heaving idly about, passive on the
rolling waters, making every one sea-sick, she
steadies on an even keel, catches the wind upon
her wings, and flies toward the point the posi




150     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
tion of which has now been revealed. So an
ultimate foreseen point d'appui, a rallying point
for all parallel or converging lines of the discourse, is necessary to give steady and swift'
progressiveness to the mind which moulds and
delivers that discourse. The converging of all
subordinate thoughts into one grand thought, to
be pressed upon the hearer, then is secured;
like the convergence of the streams running
toward a' clove' in the line of the hills. Hither
and thither, northward, southward, run the
brooks, yet ever meeting and mingling into one,
as they draw toward the gap, till the thousand
trickles become a torrent as they pour at last
through the gate into the valley. So all collateral
thoughts, arguments, illustrations of a sermon,
when bearing upon a single end of moral impression, combine their forces, rush together at last
in a common channel, and strike with heavy
impact on the mind.
This is necessary, too, to keep men from
yielding to that habit of discursiveness which is




RESTRAINS DISCURSIVENESS.      I5 I
the easily besetting sin of many full minds, and
which is absolutely fatal to one who is speaking
without his notes. No matter how brilliant the
mind may be, how richly stocked with historical
knowledges, how prolific in fancy, image, felicitous phrase, — this habit of discursiveness will
weary out the most patient congregation.
You hear one begin, for example, with some saying of the Master to John the Baptist, or to one
of his disciples. First he describes the scenery,
of the Jordan valley, or of the shores around the
sea of Tiberias; then the persons, to whom the
saying was addressed; then the possible relations
of John the Baptist to the sect of the Essenes;
then the relations of this sect to the others, and
to the whole Herodian family; then he plunges
into the interminable tangle of the Herodian
genealogy, and shows the relations of this one
and that one to the Roman emperors; then of
the Roman empire itself to the ancient civilization, with a tracing out of the roots and the
fruits of that civilization; and then he goes




152     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
kiting, at large, through the universe; - till the
hour is ended before he has fairly got back to
his text! Nobody can stand such preaching a
great while. The most patient listener will wish
by-and-by that the man's brain would explode,
and so make an end.* The best corrective to
such a dangerous tendency of mind is to have
an end, of practical impression, always in view,
from the outset on. As soon as you give one a
purpose to be accomplished, things will fall into
their places; extraneous things will be instinctively, and of course, ruled out; there will be
motion and current to his speech.
This is important, also, as it regards the mere
matter of style.  Studious men, dwelling in' the solitary and still air of delightful studies,'
are apt to get a style which reminds one of the
remark that some one has made of the style of
Tertullian —" splendid, but dark, like polished
ebony." Or, it is stiff, with interwoven threads
of gold, -like a rich brocade, beautiful to look
* Note XX.




INFLUENCE CN STYLE.         153
upon, beautiful for parade, but not fitting the
limbs, not furnishing a habit in which the mind
may freely walk and freely work, That is the
tendency with studio'us men; whose literary
enthusiasm is apt to get the mastery over their
practical evangelical zeal. Their style is sure to
become too stately.
On the other hand, there is a dangerous tendency in speaking without notes to a mere wash
of words, a debilitating fluency, in which is
neither head nor point; where nothing arrests
and strikes attention, rouses the imagination,
awakens historical recollection, elevates or animates any power where all is a dreary out-pour
of verbiage, incessantly coming, like the ribbons
in a juggler's trick. "What color will you have,
Gentlemen?" and out it comes; twenty yards of
blue, and then twenty of pink, and more and
more as it is ordered. The man who thus speaks
seems to be pulling or pumping words out of
some bottomless reservoir within, without the
smallest possible reference to any result to be




I54     PREACHING WITHOUT MOTES.
accomplished; and his own feeling, his own
thought-power, washes away on the flux of his
words. No single quality which style ought to
have is present, or is possible, under such conditions.
Dr. Emmons used to say that'style should be
like window-glass, perfectly transparent, and
with very little sash.' * That is good, so far as it
goes; but there are certain important qualities
of style which are not covered by that description. I should say, rather, that style is to
thought what the body is to the spirit. It should
be itself vital, with a life of its own, sympathetic
and responsive to the thought within.  It
should be proportionate, symmetrical, with whatever of beauty may properly belong to it. It
should be gentle enough to fondle a child, facile
enough to laugh or sing, strong enough to strike
a heavy blow, for righteousness or in self-defence,
when occasion calls for it. That is always the
best style which answers most perfectly to the
* Note XXI.




TRUE ELOQUENCE.          155
thought within, as the body to the spirit. And
you can get such a style as that, fashion it, keep
it, only by work. You do not get it in the Seminary, nor out of books. You get it by preaching, with a practical aim distinctly in view; by
letting your thought wreak itself upon expression, while it is urgent and hot within you. Thus
you gain the expression most natural to yourself,
in your best moods; and always you will find
that that mode of expression which to you is
most natural is also to others most effective and
powerful.
Observe the plain uneducated man: how well
he talks, when he has an end to accomplish by
it! The silent man, silent in all common assemblies, - there comes a time when something
calls out the force within him, some story to be
told, some enterprise to be urged, some friend to
be championed; and he speaks with freedom,
promptness, power. Without knowing it himself he almost realizes Milton's description of a
true eloquence:'his words, like so many nimble




I56     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
and airy servitors, trip about him at command,
and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall
aptly into their own places.' *
Hear the lawyer, on some important occasion,
when life is imperilled, or personal liberty, or
when large properties or great reputations are
suddenly at stake. You have heard him as a
lecturer, perhaps, and thought him dull, or
merely rhetorical — more intent on pleasing
himself with his fancies and phrases than on
pushing his thought into your mind. But now,
before the jury, when these great interests are
depending upon him, how full of force, impulse,
persuasive enthusiasm, are his words!  His
style itself is radically transformed. Every sentence is sharpened, compacted, inspired, by his
endeavor to gain his end. The intensity of his
purpose puts vigor and swiftness into his speech.
The supreme energy, the real &eVa; in utterance, only then comes forth.
Still further, too, it must be remembered that
* Note XXII.




PRAYER QUICKENED.          157
a man who is intently at work to accomplish
practical results by his preaching will pray over
his sermons, a great deal more than will another
not so moved; and so he will get the inspiring
help, the unction, and the grace, which come
from communion with the Divine Mind. The
closet will help the pulpit; and there is no force
or brilliance of mind, no fulness of knowledge,
which can make the sermon what it may be and
should be, without this touch from above upon it.
So always have in view, Gentlemen, a definite
end to be accomplished in preaching. Remember Paul's maxim: " I press toward the mark."
It is as good and true in sermonizing, as it is in
Christian life and character. Have an aim in
the sermon; and never be satisfied till the
sermon is as fit as you can make it to accomplish that aim. A man in the Seminary with
me once said, "I like to discuss subjects; but I
never know what to do with them, after they
are discussed. I can only leave them, and go
along." Such a man should always write his




I58     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
sermons, if he preaches at all; as an army
should shelter itself in a fortress, when it (annot
or dare not meet its enemy in the field; as a
man-of-war should blaze away at a distance,
when it has no pikes or cutlasses to board with.
But if you are intent upon practical ends, to
which your whole force shall contribute, then
the manuscript may go. For then your mind
will gain force, foresight, energy, from its purpose; and will give whatever of power and beauty
are natural to it to the very style of expression
through which you seek to lead men to the
throne of God.*
THIRDLY: Have in view individual hearers
in the congregation, on whom you desire to make
your impression, and with whose needs you are
familiar; to whom, therefore, your sermon is
particularly adapted, both while you study and
when you preach it.
I am inclined to think that here was an
advantage, - perhaps I should modify that
* Note XXIII.




INTEREST IN PERSONS.        159
remark, and say that here was the advantage
if anywhere, -in the old way of preparing men
for the ministry, under the care of a particular
pastor, as compared with the way in which you
are being trained, and in which I was trained,
in a Seminary; under more learned, scientific,
and laborious teachers.  I think those men
learned to be interested in persons, where we
learn chiefly to be interested in subjects. They
came in contact with individual minds, in a way
which helped them in all their ministry, though
their training was certainly less elaborate, systematic, and scholastic, than ours.
Perhaps this disadvantage in the modern
system is compensated, doubtless it is diminished, by the facilities which now abound for
work in mission-schools, Bible-classes, prayermeetings. I know, in my own experience, that
I learned some things from a Bible-class, which
I taught in the village-church at Andover, which
have been as valuable to me in subsequent life as
any thing which I learned from the magnificent




i60     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
lectures which during the week I attended and
enjoyed. I presume it is equally true of you.
If not in this way, then in some other, you Inust
get into vital contact with persons, as well as with
themes. Otherwise your real force will never
come out. The rays of light get heating power
by being focussed through a lens, and made to
converge upon one point. So a man's mental
action becomes intense, penetrating, effective,
as it contemplates a definite effect. on personal
minds.
Here was one great secret, certainly, of Dr.
Nettleton's power. I do not know that his sermons would seem extraordinary to us, if we
should now read them; since we are not the per.
sons whom he had in view in preparing and'
preaching them. But they were immensely effective at the time, because he had before him individuals, with whose states of mind he was familiar,
and to whom the truth as presented by him was
exquisitely adjusted, with every effort and every
art. As a " fisher of men" he surpassed every




THE LAWYER S EXAMPLE.        I6I
one in the skill and assiduity with which he
angled for particular souls. Thousands of anecdotes illustrate this. Accordingly he worked
with immense facility, sometimes preparing or
remodelling sermons every day for weeks together, and preaching them afterward, with an
interest in them which saved him from exhaustion; because his thought was intently fixed on
the persons whom by means of them he would
reach.
So it is with the lawyer. See him before the
jury, in a case where his convictions are strong,
and his feelings are enlisted. He saw long ago,
as he glanced over the box, that five of those in
it were sympathetic with him; as he went on,
he became equally certain of seven; the number
now has risen to ten; but two are still left,
whom he feels that he has not persuaded or
mastered. Upon them he now concentrates his
power, summing up the facts, setting forth anew
and more forcibly the principles, urging upon
them his view of the case, with a more and more




I62     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
intense action of his mind upon theirs, until
one only is left. Like the blow of a hammer,
continually repeated, till the iron bar crumbles
beneath it, his whole force comes, with ceaseless
percussion, on that one mind, till it has yielded,
and accepts the conviction on which the pleader's purpose is fixed.  Men say, afterward, "he
surpassed himself."  It was only because the
singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, an:verpowering energy, to the mind it incited.
I remember perfectly that the first time I ever
had any thorough sense of freedom, facility, selfforgetfulness in preaching, was when, some twenty-five years ago, a gentleman of my parishan unusually able and cultivated man, who had
occupied high political and social positions, and
for whom I had great respect - told me that he
was practically a fatalist. He did not use the
word, but that was what his language meant.
He believed that every thing came to pass as
God intended and wished that it should, and
that all things would come out right in the end,




PREACHING MADE EASY.         I63
There he would leave the whole matter, of life
and of the future. Well: that struck at the foundation of human responsibility. It ruled the
Bible out of the world, both law and salvation,
at one sweep. It in fact invalidated human law;
taking from it all moral elements of authority
and sacredness, and converting it into a simple
mandate of force, for the conservation of material interests. I was determined, if possible, to
push that notion out of his mind: and I remember now the enjoyment which I had, and the
easy vigor with which I wrought, in taking up an
argument, weighing it, seeing precisely how it
bore upon this point; then treating another in
like manner, and another; combining them,
bringing them in from different and unexpected
points, - until it seemed to me the demonstration was absolute, certainly to my mind, hopefully to his. When I came to preach with that
concentrated aim, that intense desire and continuing purpose to reach if possible the one
mind for which the whole sermon had been




I64     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
arranged, preaching was as easy as flight to the
bird, or swimming to the fish. It was simply
the natural motion of the mind, charged with
its subject, filled with the argument, and intent
upon the end which the argument was to serve.
Before that my sermons had been always, I
think, like the general cannonading which pre.
cedes the real shock of battle. A hundred
guns thundering away against the Cemeteryhill at Gettysburg, and a hundred guns in
tremendous reply: all uproar and smoke, but
nobody hurt! It is the rifle-ball that does the
business. So never confine yourselves to the
contemplation of themes. Make themes your
means for reaching persons; and give the mind
force, by giving it concentration.
The true evangelical fervor comes in this way,
with affectionate interest in personal souls. The
Lord himself did not come to the world to pub
lish elaborate discourses to men. He was full of
the truth; and the truth flashed from him, as
the occasion suggested. A sneering objection




VARIETY THUS SECURED.          I65
brought one discourse from him; an affectionate
inquiry elicited another; the dullness of his
disciples incited another. And all the radiance
which fills the gospels, flowing from His mind
over the world, was first drawn forth by the
minds around Him, to which He would minister
light, comfort, purity, hope. In this, as in all
else, the disciple should strive to be like his
Lord.
Observe, too, what variety you secure in this
way, in the subjects which you treat: how per.
fectly you avoid the danger, which may otherwise
be a great one, of having a limited series of
subjects, on which your mind most easily works,
and to which it returns with readiest facility.
You avoid this wholly, if your preaching has
persons always in view, and not merely subjects. For there are all sorts of minds in a congregation, and in all sorts of states. Here is
a sceptic, perhaps propagating his scepticism,
who is to be answered, silenced, if possible con
vinced. Here is a person not sceptical in tem.




I66     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
per, but teased with unwelcome and disturbing
doubts, which you are to try to remove and dis.
perse. Here is one indifferent, whom you must
arouse, and startle into attention to the truth;
another, inquiring, undecided, whom you must
urge into the way of righteousness. There are
sinners to be converted, and sufferers to be
soothed; the tempted, who are to be warned
and taught; the imperfectly developed in Christian grace, who need education in particular
qualities; the poor who must be cheered, the
rich who must be taught a more generous liberality, - that " it is more blessed to give than to
receive."
Your congregation is always a microcosm.
Little children are in it, as well as adults; the
aged, as well as the young and strong; all classes of minds, in all sorts of relations, each with
a different Past behind it. If you preach then
to individuals, you will find subjects multiplying
on your hands. Faster than you can use them,
they will come. As you take each class, or case,




PURSUE THE EFFORT.          I67
in turn, you will be really going the round of
the Christian scheme, and unconsciously will
be giving it a development as cosmic and many.
sided as itself.
And when you thus preach to individuals, be
sure that you do not give over till you have, if
possible, secured success. Don't think because
you have preached the work is done; or because
an impression is strong on your mind, that it
must of necessity be equally strong upon the
minds to which you would transfer it. A minister is always tempted to feel that because his
argument is convincing to himself, it must be
to others; that because he has personally
reached a high point, of feeling and vision, he
has carried up everybody with him to the same
It may not be so at all. Your expectation may
be very far from being realized; your preaching
be less effective than you suppose, and the response to it very different. Remember that you
preach amidst influences which work all the
while against your efforts, and which, not unfre




I68     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
quently, push out the truth faster and further
than you can insert it; so that the same man who
on Sunday was moved as if by a word from God
himself, has forgotten it all before Monday is
ended. One who weeps to-day may scoff to-morrow, and the feeling of the sanctuary may disappear altogether in Broadway or Wall Street. So
keep up your acquaintance with the minds you
address, and never expect too much from any
one sermon.
A lady coming home on one of the steamships
that cross the Atlantic, on the first day out saw
a half-drunken sailor, who was insolent to the
mate, knocked down on the spot, with a heavy
blow. The blood gushed from his nostrils; his
face puffed up in swollen and purple ridges, beneath the stroke: —it was to her simply frightful! She was sickened by it, and left the deck.
Below, she soon became sea-sick; and three or
four days passed before she again could come
upon deck. Then she saw the same man standing at the wheel; and going swiftly up to him,




FORESIGHT OF CONSEQUENCES.    I69
she asked, with womanly sympathy: "How's
your head to-day?" "West, nor'west, and running free," was the answer that staggered her.
He had wholly forgotten what to her had given
that startling shock. You laugh at this; but
you will often find that it just about parallels
the depth and the permanence of the impression which you make by the sermons on which
you most rely. What you thought sure to be
fruitful, and to abide, has gone from the memory
of those whom you especially addressed, before
the morrow's sun is up. So never give up your
thought of individuals, and your purpose to
reach them with the truth, until you know that
success is attained.
And FOURTHLY: Always carry with you into the
pulpit a sense of the immense consequences which
may depend on your full and faithful presenta.
tion of the truth.
There will be such consequences depending
on it; since,when you preach,you are bringing
the grandest moral force which the world has




I 70    PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
known into contact with minds constitutionally
adapted to receive and retain impressions from it.
It is not from ancient history, or law, that you
are to draw your lessons and your motives. It is
not from ethics, or speculative philosophy. It is
from the world supernatural, the realms invisible; from beings, and facts, Divine and eternal.
Hence come the influences which you are set
to make influential upon men's minds; from the
Advent, and the Ascension; from Sinai, and from
Calvary; from the manger at Bethlehem, and the
Judgment throne. If you feel the impression of
these on yourselves, and so preach to others -
if you are each a living Gospel, believing the
word, and preaching it because you are moved
thereto by its own force -you have a tremendous instrument to use. Then your spirit will
help your words. You will become true priests
for God, radiating to others the influence which
first has come to yourselves from Divine revelation.
And you use this instrument, accomplish this




DIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS.       171
office, in circumstances the most helpful: in the
shelter of the sanctuary; in the assembly of
communing souls; with auxiliary services, appro.
priate for the further impression of the truth;
on the Lord's Day, —that still harbor in the
week, surrounded by the breakwater of even
human law, on whose tranquil bosom the soul is
sheltered from the tumults of time. You are to
bring the Gospel, then and there, into contact
with the minds before you. There must be an
impression from it, falling with power on those
who hear it. This cannot be otherwise. It may
work in one direction, it may work in another.
It is like the sunshine, which touches the meadows, and makes them bloom in brighter verdure,
which touches the sand, and makes it more dry
and vitreous than it was: which touches one
metallic plate, treated with iodine, and turns it
purple; another, treated with nitrate of silver,
and turns it black. Some will resist your influence: you cannot help it. Some will accept,
and be forever quickened by it; and this shall




172     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
be to you a joy. You will feel, then, that you
are accomplishing the noblest office which God
ever gives to man on earth; since the issue
of your work is an influence upon character,
and an influence upon character involves influence upon destiny —immortal destinies flowing
from character.*
In revivals men feel this; and it makes the
dull eloquent as they feel it. At all times we
should feel it, when we enter the pulpit to declare to men God's message of grace. Oftentimes, when we are wholly unaware, there are
minds in the congregation approaching the fateful point of transition from one course to another, like men riding side by side in a railway
carriage till they reach the point where their
paths diverge. They have come from Montreal
to Rutland, perhaps; riding together all the
way. There, one of them steps to another seat.
For a space their tracks run parallel still, but
by degrees they diverge; further, and further,
* Note XXIV.




CRITICAL POINTS IN EXPERIENCE.   I73
they go asunder; till, of the two so lately riding
and talking together, one has reached Boston,
Liverpool, Berlin, the other San Francisco,
Yokohama, Hong Kong. Side by side, a few
weeks since, and now the diameter of the earth,
between them! At any time there may be before you minds approaching such critical points
in their experience; the turning-points, f om
which the whole course of their life shall run, in
one direction or the other, forevermore. No circle of the centuries shall again bring them together. You do not know when these moments
come; and should always preach as if, among
those whom you address, there might be some
who had reached them now.
What a striking thing that is in the crowded
and radiant gospel of John, full of sublimest
discourses and events, when he says in speaking
of his first meeting with the Master: "It was
about the tenth hour""! About the tenth hour?
Why put so unimportant a circumstance into a
gospel so brief at the best, and where sublime




174     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
things have hardly room? There is nothing
strange in it. John could not forget, and must
insert it. It was the first time he had talked
with Him whose love and wisdom became there
after his inspiration, in life, and death, and the
hereafter; and the very moment was vivid still
before his recollection. He remembered just
how high the sun was, above the western Mediterranean, at that supreme point in his experience. He remembers it now. So there are
moments in the experience of many, when they
heard from the pulpit words of power, declaring
to them God's love in Christ, which will be
memorable to them forever, —as long as the
issues of the choices which they made continue
to unfold.
You will not discern the presence of such
moments, when you are speaking; but never
forget that they may come, in any sermon. And
so let the consequences possibly depending on
your faithful and full presentation of the truth
be always distinctly present to you.*
* Note XXV.




RESTRAINT OF ECCENTRICITY.    175
The thought of them will inspire you to the
best use of every power which you possess, that
you may make the highest thought, the widest
study, converge upon present and practical
results. It will have the effect to dignify and
ennoble the mind itself; stirring it up, as the
statesman is stirred, on the great occasion, as the
lawyer, when pleading for life in peril; making
it robust, manly, eager. It will make one serious, too, reverent, modest; and will keep him,
absolutely, from resorting to those tricks, antics,
grimaces, which seem now-a-days to be coming
into fashion, and which are perhaps more likely
to be adopted by those who preach without their
notes than by those who carefully write their
sermons.
In regard to these eccentricities of manner, I,
for one, would speak with caution. I am certainly no precisian, in regard to gesture or
speech in the pulpit. I believe that every man
should use the power which God has given him,
in the way most natural, under the impulse of




176     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
the supreme consciousness that God is speaking
His truth through him. If the teachings of any
professor hindered me from that, with all respect
and affection for him I would forget his instructions as soon as I could. If Dr. Blair's volumes
stood in the way of it, I would tie those volumes
in one big package, and make a nice grave for
them, in the garden or the sea. Let men' speak
with the purpose af reaching, helping, blessing others; and each according to his own idiom,
of nature and of habit.*
But there is oftentimes a tendency, not to be
individual, idiomatic, in speech, but to be theoretical, imitative. Because oa:e ireacher gestures
with his heels, - as Mr. Choate was once said to
do,- a young man thinks that he must do the
same. Because one drops his voice to a whisper,
and follows with tremendous explosions of sound,
somebody else feels bound to do likewise. He
becomes in fact, without intending it, a hypo.
crite, in the original sense ~-oxQt1s, an actor
* Note XXVI.




SECOND-HAND ECCENTRICITIES.    I77
Then he finds, very likely, that something outr/
and sensational in style draws an assembly, and
so he seeks to reproduce that; till he comes to
be full, in his own utterance, of a second-hand
sensational bosh, without substance or sense,reminding one of what an English lady said of
the shop-windows in Paris, during the Prussian
siege: that "they showed fifty pots of mustard
to an ounce of meat."
Eccentricity is undoubtedly sometimes legitimate; the privilege of an anomalous mind.
Surprising and startling things sometimes are
useful; irritants of an attention which would
otherwise fail. But when one attempts to imitate these, to ape eccentricity, to systematize surprises, and to put on the manner of somebody
else, he is simply contemptible, and certain to
fail. Yet when the itch for this thing, and for
the transient notoriety which it brings, has once
got into a man, there is no friction that I know
of, of critical ointments, that will take it out.
Nothing but a thorough alterative will do it;




178     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
and the only proper alterative is, a sense of the
far-extending consequences which depend on his
ministry. That will make him serious, sober;
too grave for grimaces, and too thoughtful for
tricks.*
It will keep him, too, from yielding to the
temptations to negligence and indolence. I do
not know whether it was Occom, the Mohegan
preacher to the Montauk Indians, or some other
Indian candidate for the ministry - Dr. Prime
perhaps could tell us - who was asked before the
Presbytery the question which your Professor of
Theology is very likely to ask of some of you:
"What is original sin?" and who answered that'he didn't know what other people's might be,
but he rather thought that his was laziness.'
There are many others who suffer from the
same, very radical in the soul; and it often
develops into actual transgression. You will be
more in danger from it, if you have some facility
in extemporaneous speech. You are busy with
* Note XXVII.




INDOLENCE PREVENTED.        I79
ntl-er things during the week; you postpone any
thorough preparation for the Sunday; you find
that for a time your people will be satisfied, at
least the unreflecting will be, with something
which has not cost much labor; and after a
while you come to intermit all careful and
thorough analysis of subjects, and to trust to
superficial suggestions, and to hasty and careless
forms of speech. It will work like dry-rot, eating out the heart of your strength. Water does
not run down hill more surely than such a man
declines in power.
The way to guard against it is, to bear in
mind, as before, the transcendent consequences
which connect themselves with what you do, in
the pulpit, and before you enter it. Then you
will feel that you must not enter it without full
preparation; that the interests involved are too
sacred and high.  Your pulpit will be the
throne of your thoughts, through all the week.
Nothing else will seriously divert your mind
from the work to be done in it.




I80     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
The same contemplation, of results to be
realized through your ministrations, will help to
form in you that instinct of skill in your work
of preaching which no Seminary can teach;
which you must each one gain for yourselves,
by practice, experience, self-discipline, observation. There is such a practical instinct of skill,
in every art, and every profession; which gives
the intuitive law of success, and shows the only
way to reach it; by which one can instantly use
his powers, to the greatest advantage, with the
utmost facility, for accomplishing his ends. You
see it everywhere. One man takes aim at the
target carefully, and misses it wholly; another
simply raises his rifle, apparently without aim,
and the obedient bullet strikes the bull's-eye.
One man pitches and rolls in the surf-boat,
wholly unable to reach the shore, till a wave
overturns him, and he is flung upon the sand
gasping and drenched; another slides in on the
incoming breaker, and before an imperceptible
turn of the oar the boat rides smoothly to the




THE INSTINCT OF SKILL.       Ist
beach, landing him high and dry on its safe
ridges.
So, everywhere, there is this instinct of skill;
which the preacher needs to get, like all other
workmen; which he can get only by earnest,
continuous, conscientious work, in view of the
results which depend on his work. When he
thus labors, he will find after a while that the
muscle of the mind, like that of the body,
becomes autonomic, a law unto itself; that the
intuition with which it works is a safer and
surer guide than precepts; and that better
and swifter success is reached than the most
laborious planning could have gained.
Remember, therefore, always, when you go
into the pulpit, that there may be minds before
you in the assembly at critical points in their
progress, to which your words will give an impulse, in one direction or another, forevermore;
that there certainly are minds there adapted to the
truth, and sure to take from it an abiding impression. Then your preparation will be thorough




182     PREACH ING WITHOUT NOTES.
and careful. Then you will learn how to handle
the themes committed to you with swiftest and
with clearest skill; and then whatever you do in
the pulpit will be done with earnestness, effectiveness, solemnity.
And FIFTHLY: Remember always to carry
with you into the pulpit a sense of the personal
presence of the Master.
Every minister should do that, whether he
reads his sermon from a manuscript, or speaks
without notes. But he who preaches without
his notes, pre-eminently should do it. The presence of the Master! It is, indeed, a wonderful
thing. "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of
them." That is the promise, the divine declaration; always fulfilled. It sounds like romance.
To men of the world it seems no more than a
fairy-tale. But it is the essential truth of God's
word, the grandest reality of human experience.
Here, in this room, this hour, is the Master! in
every assembly, where HIis children meet, and




SENSE OF CHRIST S PRESENCE.    I83
where His kingly word is spoken! By the brook,
where the Covenanters worshipped; in the catacombs, where Christian converts first uttered
their praises; in the great cathedral, where
through all symbols devout spirits discern the
Lord; in wood and wilderness, where pilgrim
and pioneer sing and pray: everywhere - Christ
is present, whom saints adore, and angels serve!
And where He is, the place is holy: the service
great.
I remember words which I heard thirty years
ago, when graduating from the Seminary, which
I will read, if you will allow me. They were
spoken by one then, and ever since, an honored
and eminent pastor in Boston. I have never forgotten them, from that day to this: —
" In a certain congregation there was a hearer
of whose presence the preacher was not aware
during the delivery of his sermon. When the
fact of that hearer's presence was made known
to him, it had a great effect upon the preacher.
I.. Who was the preacher, and who this hearer?




I84     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
The preacher I doubt not may have been any
young minister present, and the hearer was
Jesus Christ. Every time we have preached
we have had Him for a hearer. When the great
and the learned and the honored of the earth
come to hear you, He is there, whose opinion of
you, while it is infinitely more important than
theirs, will either confirm or reverse their judgment of you. When we meet a few of our
flock in that distant school-house on a dark and
stormy night, and something whispers, Will you
waste your time and strength on these poor
people? the Son of God is there to hear what
you say to them, and to have an opinion of you
for saying it, which is or will hereafter be a
greater reward to you than the applauses of a
throng. In the bungalow, or under the plantain or the palm, or in those South African huts
where you must creep like an animal to get in,
remember that you cannot speak in His name
but you will speak in His ear." *
* Address of Dr. N Adams: Bib. Sac. Yol. ii. p. 709.




FORBIDS FEAR OF MAN.         I85
Gentlemen: this was not said with references
especially, to sermons preached without a manuscript. The speaker himself has always, I believe, written his sermons, and has done it with
admirable care and skill. But what he says applies with, if possible, a more peremptory force to
those who preach without their notes.
Every minister who does this should remember
the impressive and powerful truth which these
words convey. The thought of the presence of
Christ beside him will absolutely expel from his
mind all fear of man. He will be undaunted
before any criticism, on his manner, or looks, or
mode of speaking, if he feels that he is so much
in earnest that Christ approves. It will not limit
his individuality. It will not disturb the most
delicate and sensitive processes of his mind. It
will breed in him no undue self - distrust.
Rather, it will invigorate and quicken each power,
and make him more natura1, and more self.
possessed. For God has created every power
which we have; has created them for His service;




I86     PREACHING WIrHOUT NOTES.
and the Master recognizes every such power, and
bestows upon it His benediction, if it be used in
loyalty to Him. He does not disparage it; and
we shall not, if we sympathize with Him.
There is no use in trying to make ourselves
like others, or to gain for ourselves a special
faculty which others have, while we have not.
This very variety is in God's plan; and to try
to make one man like another, in the pulpit or
out of it, is to contravene His design. You might
as well try to make a rose resemble in petals a
~alla-lily; or to make a nightingale, with its
plaintive note, whistle military airs like a trained
bullfinch. God gives to one a doctrine, to another
a song; to one the word of wisdom, to another
the word of knowledge; to another prophecy;
to another divers kinds of tongues; to another
the interpretation of tongues; — and we are simply to hold and use, as sacred to Him, whatever
power we possess. He had a use, and a great one,
for the rugged, self-willed, impatient Peter, as
well as for the sensitive John; for Luke, with




PREVENTS A SECULAR SPIRIT.         I 87
his delicate skill in narration, as well as for Paul,
with his immense dialectical force. He has offices
and services for each of us. What He wants is
that we use, to the utmost limit, every power we
possess, which He has given, which we have gladly
consecrated to Him. A sense of His personal
presence with us will, therefore, but make us
more wholly natural, self-revealing. It will be
like the influence of the sun on the earth, bringing forth the retiring flowers and grasses, and
crowning with blossoms all the trees. Whatever
of force, whatever of beauty, there is in our
minds, will come by means of it into more effective and noble exercise
It will keep us from being secularized in
spirit. When not absorbed in the high and vast
subjects which the Gospel presents, the mind is
apt to grow frigid and unfruitful on its spiritual
side. It gets largely interested in other things;
literary, social, political movements, scientific dis.
cussion, external reform. The richness of expe.
rience will then fail in its utterance.   The




I88     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
Christian glow,' the consecration and the gleam,'
will not kindle its speech. But the sense of the
personal presence of Christ is a constant corrective to such tendencies. It inspires one to
enter the secrets of the Gospel, and to speak
from a heart in sympathy with the Lord's. It will
make our preaching- to adopt the distinction
which some have drawn between John's gospel
and those of the Synoptists - pneumatic, not
somatic; spiritual, not external. And such a
preaching has always a power which the skilfullest arrangement of arguments and of words
toils after in vain.
It will inspire in us the true enthusiasm - the'God within us' - which is like the flame shining within the transparent vase, and revealing
itself through all exterior lines and tints. When
this is kindled, and constantly burns, in any soul,
it makes effort easy, success sure: it is itself a
power for God, manifesting His glory through
all the faculties which His Spirit illumines.
It will make us glad, this sense of Christ's




GREATNESS OF OUR OFFICE.       I89
presence; it will make us fearless, ardent, devoted. It will unite us in thought with all who
have preceded us in the work, preaching His
word. We shall see that he is the only true successor of the apostles, who brings the power of
Christ, as they did, the Spirit of God, with His
promises and truths, to operate on the immortal
spirits for which Christ died. We shall feel this
office the most august and illustrious on earth;
that no other can be ever its equal while time
continues; that every thing else, in society and
in history, is but the scaffolding to it; that its re.
suits will still continue when Waterloo and Trafalgar are wholly forgotten. There will come to
us quickening inspiration from the thought, on
every side.
Even Paul himself rejoiced to say, when no
man stood with him, but all men forsook him:
"Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me, and
strengthened me; that by me the preaching
might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles
might hear." If he needed this sense of Christ's




I90     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
presence, much more do we! If he attained it,
so may we. And when we recognize it, with
an interior sweetness of certainty, we shall not
feel abashed because we have no manuscript
before us. To speak for Him will be our im.
pulse. No matter how timid, nervous, self-diffi.
dent, we are in ourselves, as we touch His pierced
and royal hand we shall be instantly masterful
and strong. We can enter, then, that marvellous
experience of a derived omnipotence which Paul
had, with all his humility, when he wrote to his
friends from his prison at Rome: "I can do all
things, through Christ which strengtheneth
me!"
FINALLY: Gentlemen, Be perfectly careless of
criticism, and expect success.
You will meet criticism, of course; for you are
going out into communities filled with the infiu.
ence of literary culture and intellectual activity,
and in those communities you are to preach.
There, indeed, you must learn to preach. You
are to learn in the pulpit. You cannot learn




LEARNING TO PREACH.         I91
to preach in the Seminary, any more than
you can learn to swim by stretching yourselves upon this table. You may imitate the
motions; but the yielding and buoyant element
beneath, is here quite wanting. The lawyer
has to learn his skill by practice in the courts;
the physician his, not in clinics or laboratories,
but in his actual ministry to patients. So you
must learn to preach without notes, if you do it
at all, in the pulpit, and nowhere else. If these
eminent teachers shall have helped you toward
it, your memory of them will be sweet and lasting. If any words of mine shall be of the least
assistance to you, I shall rejoice to have been
permitted to speak them. But you must after
all learn for yourselves, and learn by practice.
And in this you will suffer under some disad.
vantages. You will come into comparison with
other, older, perhaps abler men, who have won
already facility by practice; who have, very
likely, special gifts which you have not, while
you may have gifts which are not theirs. You




I92     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
will come into comparison, not with ministers
only, but with lawyers, and lecturers - many of
them of engaging and eminent parts, who have
trained themselves to speak, by incessant endeavor, and with consummate success. You cannot
expect to secure the same literary completeness
and finish, in a spoken sermon, which you might
have gained in one that was written. A spoken
sermon is like a rapid and vivid sketch, rather
than like a finished picture: vigorous in outline,
strong in coloring, with life in its parts, but
wanting extreme minuteness of execution in
subordinate details. If you want that, and are
determined to have it - if you must have every
period'round as Giotto's 0,' if you cannot be
satisfied without the ivory finish of Carlo Dolci,
or the microscopic exactness of Denner's portraits in the Vienna Belvedere, where each
wrinkle and hair, one might almost say each
pore of the skin, is presented on the canvas —
then, assuredly, write your sermons. You cannot
gain otherwise what you want. At least I do




ACCEPTANCE BY THE PEOPLE.    193
not believe it possible to give to a free and spoken sermon the same elaborateness and fineness
of finish which you may to one written.
But if you are willing to preach correctly,
truthfully, energetically, - giving no special
thought to the perfection of your finish, except
to get as much of it as you can, without being
hindered, and to be careless of what you lose, —
then speak without writing. Your people will
soon come to accept it, and will be stirred by it
as they are not by essays. At first they may
criticise, and compare your discourses with those
of some one who writes with elegance and felicity; but after a while they will choose the utterance through which an eager personal soul is
speaking to them its present thought.
I mean that most of them will. Of course, in
almost every congregation, there will be some,
like Iago, who are "nothing, if not critical."
There may be those, I have known such persons, who think themselves wise in exact proportion as they suspect defects in others, and




194     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
whose chief criterion of their evangelical insight
and zeal appears to be the readiness and the
rashness of their criticism  of sermons.  You
must expect to encounter such people; and
sometimes, no doubt, especially in your earlier
years, their criticism will cut you till it hurts.
But remember this: that the criticism is often
itself wrong and unreasonable, and then you
may laugh at it. So it is everywhere. Hear
the criticisms made in a great gallery of pictures, by those who are walking through it: the
preference of one for some modern garish
French interior, over the tender and harmonious
beauty of Correggio's Holy Night; of another
for the crude flash and glitter of a recent landscape, over the sweet and sunny splendor of
Claude Lorraine. Half the criticism you hear,
and nearly all the praise, will be like this; intrinsically worthless. Your ambitious passages
may elicit an applause which it were folly to
heed; while your best sermons, except by a
few, may be quite disregarded.




LEARN FROM CRITICISM.        I95
But then remember, also, that the criticisms
upon you will sometimes be just, and such as
you may heed with lasting advantage. It will
sometimes be said that' you are too long,'- as
you all are just now saying about me; and you
will know in yourself that it is so. Then abbreviate, condense; stop, if needful, before you
are through.'You use too many words for
your thought;' then compact, and compress.'Too dry and logical;' then expand, and decorate.'Too constantly doctrinal;' then preach the
evangelical practice, till they want the whole
circle of the doctrines of grace to inspire them
to attempt it. Get hints and lessons from the
sharpest criticism, and strive to correct what it
indicates as faults. You will often learn most
and best in this way, while it will utterly fail to
disturb you; for if your mind is wholly fixed on
bringing the water of life to your people, you
will not much care, except for their sakes,
whether you offer it in a pewter mug or in a
silver chalice.




I96     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
After that, criticism may often help, but it
never can hurt you.
Be sure, when it comes, that you take it like a
man, and are never overcome by it. Remember
what Sheridan said, when he came out from the
House of Commons, after they had hissed him:
"It's in me, and [with an oath] it shall come
out." Omit the oath, but make the vow. If it
is in you, and you know it - the conviction of
the truth, and the power to express it —determine that it shall at last come out. And let the
adverse breath of criticism be to you only what
the blast of the storm-wind is to the eagle: a
force against him, that lifts him higher.
Remember that ere long the criticism will
have wholly passed away, except in the result
which it leaves upon your mind, and in the
effect which it has upon your preaching. As your
people become accustomed to your manner; as
they recognize your sincerity, and the earnestness of your work; as they see in your sermons
the fruit of study, and feel that you come to




LIBERT Y AT LAST.        I97
them from communion with God; as you get
a firm and vital hold on some among them, by
meeting their difficulties, cheering their hearts,
bracing their wills to a hardier effort, lifting
them up to the serener air, — they will no more
think of any criticism. You will enter into the
liberty you have won. Your pulpit will be to
you a home and a throne. You will become
your own legislator, as to forms and modes, in
subordination only and always to Him for whom
you speak to men. And when you come to that
experience you will often find that it was the
very criticism which stung which brought you
to it, and that what has now been utterly fox.
gotten by those who made it, remains with you,
in your greater facility, and your continually
augmenting power.  So be not dismayed by
any criticism; but forget it if unjust, and reap
from it, if just, whatever of personal benefit you
can.
And always, Gentlemen, expect success. I
do not mean for yourselves, specially, in the way




I98     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
of fame, personal distinction, lucrative appointments. These may come, or they may not. It
is a matter of little consequence. Remember
the words of Thackeray, that sad and sombre
humorist: "What boots it whether it be Westminster or a little country spire which covers
your ashes; or if a few days sooner or later the
world forgets you? " * Above all others, the
minister should remember the profound and
secular wisdom there is in those words of the
Master: " For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life, for My
sake, and the Gospel's, the same shall save it."
Influence comes to self-forgetfulness.  Honor
and power have consecration for their condition.
And you will find that the more careless you are
of the things which the world esteems success,
the more likely you are, if not to reap it, certainly to reach the best results which it could
have given, in your experience of happiness
and of usefulness.
* Pendennis, vol L p. 0o3.




POWER OF THE GOSPEL.        199
But expect success in your work for Christ.
You have a right to rely upon that; and you
need the strength which the foresight of it
gives. The suspension-bridge must be anchored
at both ends, if one would make it steadfast and
strong. Men's souls require to be equally braced.
You must not only have an impulse to work,
but the sure expectation of success in the
work, — your mind and spirit must be poised
upon both, - if you would be so tranquil in mind
before your people that trains of thought shall
pass incessantly on your words, without one painful pause or jar. You have a right to expect
such success. The truth of God, which is put
into your hands, is the power of God to men's
salvation; and never was its power more plainly
exhibited than in our own time. The harlots
and the dock-thieves along our own wharves,
converted to God, now praising Him whom once
they cursed, and working for men whom once
they wrecked, - there have been no greater tri.
umphs of the Gospel since Christendom begar.




200     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
And this is the instrument which you have to
use, sovereign and swift, the very sword of the
Spirit.
Your success may not come at the precise
time when you expect it, or in the way which
you anticipate. It may not come so that you
yourselves shall see it on earth.  The Master
seemed to men to have realized but small success, in His sublime mission: twelve Apostles,
and one of them a traitor; of all the multitudes
who had heard His words, His final following
very small.  Paul, the greatest of human
preachers, did not appear to achieve large success: a few scattered and small congregations,
in the various Greek cities, with error, impurity,
dissension among them, the old Paganism still in
part poisoning their life. But out of his labors,
and those of his companions, Christendom has
come. Out of the work of each faithful minister come consequences of good, immense if unseen.  Out of the labor, and sacrifice, and
patience, of multitudes of faithful saints and




HASTENING MILLENNIUM.        201
teachers, whose very names we do not know,
has come our Christian civilization.
Success is certain, in the end. Then seize it
with your hope beforehand.  Remember that
while you are working Millennium draws nearer;
and that it is your privilege to hasten its coming. " Hasting the coming of the day of God;"
not hasting to it. I trust our Revisers will leave
out the " unto:" there is no e4i before the napovaiav. Not suicide, but success, is what the
apostle would have us seek.
And even if success does not appear now, or
ever on earth, it will surely come in the Beyond.
More than once, as I have stood by the grave of
a young minister, dead in his prime, - as I have
bowed, amazed and baffled, before that event
which seems to contradict all economies of God's
universe, and to make the cultured power, the
garnered knowledge, the vivifying spirit, of no
avail, -— I have remembered words in the same
Address from which I have already quoted, two or
three sentences of which you will let me read:




202     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
"We may remember that this life may not be
the only term of service in which God may use
us to influence others by the communication of
our thoughts and feelings. It cannot be that
eloquent communication from mind to mind is
limited to earth..... From your lips, if they
have dwelt with peculiar love and power on the
doctrines of the cross, may the inhabitants of
other worlds learn things yet imperfectly understood by them in the history of Redemption. It
may be that you will then be called of God to
be employed in wondrous acts of ministry to
other worlds, because He can say of you, in remembrance of your earthly attainments and
service,' I know that he can speak well."' *
Young Gentlemen: in all your life remember
this! Let it lift and delight you! Cherish each
force, and discipline every noblest power, under
its inspiration! Let all work take a lustre from
it I! And expect the time when the Son of Man,
no more invisible, shall be revealed; and when by
* Address of Dr. N. Adams; Bib. Sac. vol. ii. p. 7I.




RESULTS OF THE METHOD.       203
Him shall be opened to you, if here you have been
His earnest servants, that grand and bright expanse of Heaven in which may He say to all of
us:' On earth ye have been the rulers over a few
things; a few faculties, a few knowledges, a
few opportunities: Lo, I will make you rulers
over many things, in this kingdom of my
Father!' *
Gentlemen: I feel, very keenly, that in what I
have said, I have been but giving you a catalogue
of my conscious deficiencies. I have not stated
a principle, or laid down a precept, that does not
now come back to me, as I think of it, with an
edge of rebuke. But no matter. These are the
points where you need to be strong that you
may preach, with real success, without writing
your sermons. If you are willing to do the
work, I think you will be well repaid. You will
rescue more time, for larger studies. The frag.
ments and bits of fractured days will become
more available. A certain amount of nervous
* Note XXVIII.




204     PREACHING WITHOUT NOTES.
waste, in desk and pen-work, will be spared.
You will find the mind fruitful, or even luxuriant, at times when it otherwise would lie fallow
and sterile. You will reach at times a height
of conviction, an intensity of feeling, a supremacy of vision, which you cannot attain except
the animation of the assembly be around you.
I think you will have a more intimate sense of
the presence of the Spirit of God within you,
and of the Christ who stands beside you.
But if you undertake the work, remember
that you are to give to it time, labor, patience,
prayer, invincible resolution; and are not to give
it up until you have reached all that success
which, within the limitations of nature and of
grace, is possible for you. Do it, not in indolence, and not in ambition. Do it, as an offering
to the Master, in the spirit of perfect consecration to Him! Do it, as David did his office, when
Araunah offered him the threshing-floor, and the
wood, and the oxen for his sacrifice, and he said:
" I will not offer unto the Lord my God of that




CLOSE OF LECTURES.        205
which doth cost me nothing." Do it, in the spirit
of Paul, when he wrote to the Philippian Christians: "If I be offered -my very life poured
out as a libation - upon the sacrifice and service
of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all."
And so may God accept and bless you in all
your ministry, and take you at its end to His
own presence I








APPENDIX.
207








APPENDIX.
A FEW notes have been hastily added to
the foregoing lectures, containing, chiefly, brief
passages from great writers, which illustrate or
emphasize certain points in the text. If leisure
had permitted, these might of course have been
many times multiplied. Only those are now
given which have chanced to be brought to distinct remembrance, in reviewing the general
course of thought, or in reading the proof-sheets.
If these richly-woven words of the masters of
sentences shall seem to hang on the lectures
which precede them like tassels of gold upon a
common fabric, it is hoped, nevertheless, that
they may in part redeem the poverty which they
cannot disguise, but must, undoubtedly, make
more apparent.
209




210                APPENDIX.
NOTE I. PAGE 40.
"Every sermon costs me as much time and labor to
write as to furnish the matter and subsequent corrections
for six or seven. And I have more business to occupy
my time and thoughts than you probably suppose.
When you see me lounging about the garden, and pruning a rose-bush, you probably suppose that I am thinking
of nothing else; when, perhaps, I am deliberating on
some weighty matter, on which I have to decide." - Letter
of Abl. Whately: Life, vol. ii. p. 226.
NOTE II. PAGE 46.
Macaulay has pictured two different masters
of the English language, in passages of his
Essays which may be usefully read together:"His [Dryden's] command of language was immense.
With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of
England,- the art of producing rich effects by familiar
words..... On the other hand, he was the first writer
under whose skilful management the scientific vocabulary
fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department




APPENDIX.                 211
he succeeded as completely as his contemporary Gibbons
succeeded in the similar enterprise of carving the most
delicate flowers from heart of oak. The toughest and
most knotty parts of language became ductile at his
touch." - Essay, on Dryden.
" The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and
invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to
obtain a wide command over the English language. The
vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people.
There is not an expression, if we except a few technical
terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant... Yet no writer has said more exactly what he
meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely
dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly
sufficient." - Essay, on Pilgrim's Progress.
NOTE III. PAGE 47.
From the multitude of illustrations in Shak.
speare of his keen sense of the strength or the
music of words, two may be taken, the contrast
between them emphasizing each:



212                APPENDIX.
"I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army
shooting at me: she speaks poniards, and every word
stabs." - Much Ado about Nothing, act ii. sc. I.
"His eye begets occasion for his wit:
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest;
Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor,
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is his discourse."
Love's Labor's Lost, act ii. sc. i
NOTE IV. PAGE 47.
"It was the Ardc dia [of Sidney] which first taught
to the contemporary writers that inimitable interweaving
and contexture of words, that bold and unshackled use
and application of them, - that art of giving to language,
appropriated to objects the most common and trivial, a
kind of acquired and adventitious loftiness, and to diction
in itself noble and elevated a sort of super-added dignity,
-that power of ennobling the sentiments by the language and the language by the sentiments, - which so




APPENDIX.                  213
often excites our admiration in perusing the writers of the
age of Elizabeth." — Retrosjpective Review; quoted by
Hallam: Lit. Hist. of Europe, part 2, chap. vii.
NOTE V. PAGE 49.
"The collocation of words is so artificial in Shakspeare
and Milton, that you may as well think of pushing a brick
out of a wall with your fore-finger, as attempt to remove
a word out of any of their finished passages." — Coleridge's Table Talk, July 3, 1833.
Perhaps as fair an account as can be given of
some of Coleridge's own sentences is contained
in this later remark of his about Shakspeare: —
" Shakspeare's intellectual action is wholly unlike that
of Ben Jonson, or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter
see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project
it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, and evolving B.
out of A., and C. out of B., and so on, just as a serpent
moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and
seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength."
- Tabe Talk, March 5, I834.




214                APPENDIX.
NOTE VI. PAGE 52.
"Stylus optimus et praestantissimus dicendi effector ac
magister; neque injuria. Nam si subitam et fortuitam ora.
tionem commentatio et cogitatio facile vincit; hanc ipsam
profecto assidua ac diligens scriptura superabit. Omnes
enim, sive artis sunt loci, sive ingenii cujusdam atque
prudentiat, qui modo insunt in ea re, de qua scribimus,
anquirentibus nobis, omnique acie ingenii contemplantibus ostendunt se et occurrunt; omnesque sententiae,
verbaque omnia, qu2 sunt cujusque generis maxime il.
lustria, sub acumen styli subeant et succedant necesse
est; turn ipsa collocatio conformatioque verborum perficitur in scribendo, non poetico, sed quodam oratorio
numero et modo." — CICERO: De Oratore, lib. I, cap.
xxxiii.
How vividly the effect of careful and habitual
writing upon unwritten speech, in imparting to
it the law of its own movement, is illustrated
in the well-known figure which closes the same
chapter': -
"Ut concitato navigio, quum  remiges inhibuerunt.
retinet tamen ipsa navis motum et cursum suum, inter*




APPENDIX.                 215
misso impetu pulsuque remorum: sic in oratione perpetua, quum scripta deficiunt, parem tamen obtinet
oratio reliqua cursum, scriptorum similtiudine et vi concitata."
NOTE VII. PAGE 63.
" It's a great mistake to think any thing too profound
or rich for a popular audience. No train of thought is
too deep, or subtle, or grand - but the manner of presenting it to their untutored minds should be peculiar. It
should be presented in anecdote, or sparkling truism, or
telling illustration, or stinging epithet; always in some
concrete form, never in a logical, abstract, syllogistic
shape." - CHOATE: Parker's Reminiscences, p. 261.
NOTE VIII. PAGE 66.
" Be a man's vocation what it may, his rule should be
to do its duties perfectly, to do the best he can, and thus
to make perpetual progress in his art. In other words,
Perfection should be proposed....
"Difficulty is the element, and resistance the true
work, of a man." - CHANNING: vol. ii. p. 385.




216                APPENDIX.
NOTE IX. PAGE 76.
"Our ideas are so infinitely enlarged by Revelation,
the eye of reason has so wide a prospect into Eternity,
the notions of a Deity are so worthy and refined, and the
accounts we have of a state of happiness or misery so
clear and evident, that the contemplation of such objects
will give our discourse a noble vigor, an invincible force,
beyond the power of any human consideration." - TYh
Sbectator, No. 633.
NOTE X. PAGE 80.
" When the sermon is good we need not much concern
ourselves about the form of the pulpit. But sermons
cannot always be good; and I believe that the temper in
which the congregation set themselves to listen may be
in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or
unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition
of the place appointed for the speaker, - not to the same
degree, but somewhat in the same way, that they may be
Influenced by his own gestures or expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says....  But if once we
begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a
mau sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of




APPENDIX.                  217
life or death whether we hear or refuse,.. 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." - RUSKIN: Stones of Venice, vol. ii., chap. ii.,
~~ 13, I4.
"The successive pulpits of the Abbey, if not equally
expressive of the changes which it has witnessed,
carry on the sound of many voices, heard with delight
and wonder in their time. No vestige remains of the old
mediaeval platform whence the Abbots urged the reluctant Court of Henry III. to the Crusades. But we have
still the fragile structure from which Cranmer must have
preached at the coronation and funeral of his royal godson; and the more elaborate carving of that which resounded with the passionate appeals, at one time of




218                APPENDIX.
Baxter, Howe, and Owen, at other times of Heylin,
Williams, South, and Barrow.... The marble pulpit
in the nave, given in I859 to commemorate the beginning
of the Special Services through which Westminster led
the way in re-animating the silent naves of our cathedrals, has thus been been the chief vehicle of the varied
teaching of those who have been well called'the People's preachers:''vox quidem dissona, sed una religio.'
- STANLEY: Memorials of West. Abbey, ch. vi. p. 551.
NOTE XI. PAGE 93.
"The sun, which we want, ripens wits, as well as
fruits." — MILTON: Hist. of Britain, book iii.
" To be free-minded, and cheerfully disposed, at hours
of meat and of sleep and of exercise, is one of the best
precepts of long lasting."- Bacon's Essays, xxx.
"Happily for my eyes, I have always closed my
studies with the day, and commonly with the morning;
and a long, but temperate, labor has been accomplished,
without fatiguing either the mind or body." - GIBBON'S
Memoirs, p. I 7.




APPENDIX.                 219
NOTE XII. PAGE 96.
"The most wearisome details of questions, now this
long while settled and forgotten, receive a suffusion of
interest and color from the constant play around them
of wide and rich human wisdom. Whatever he handled.. all was treated with that nobility of idea and expres.
sion which mere talent is invariably the better for studying, but which is only inborn, familiar, and perfect, in
a few men of fine genius and deep morality of nature.
Passion left flaws to offend a fastidious taste, and too
frequently marked his gravity with exaggeration, and
his humor with clumsiness. But these were mainly
accidents of atmosphere. Notwithstanding them, we look
in vain elsewhere in the history of English politics for
the illumination of such questions as those before us,
by such amplitude of knowledge, united to so much
comprehension, force, and elevation." - MORLEY; Study
of Edmund Burke, p. 167.
"His wonderful ability for comprehending and reasoning, his quickness of apprehension, his faculty for
analyzing a subject to its elements, for seizing on the
essential points, for going back to principles and forward




220                APPENDIX.
to consequences, and for bringing out into an intelligi.
ble and sometimes very obvious form what appeared
obscure or perplexed, remained unaltered to the last.
This noble intellect, thus seen with a diminished lustre
of imagination, suggested the idea of a lofty eminence,
raising its form and summit clear and bare towards the
sky, losing nothing of its imposing aspect by absence
of the wreaths of tinctured clouds, which may have invested it at another season.... He was eminently
successful on subjects of an elevated order, which he
would expand and illustrate in a manner which sustained
them to the high level of their dignity. This carried him
near some point of the border of that awful darkness
which encompasses, on all sides, our little glimmering
field of knowledge; and then it might be seen how aware
he was of his approach, how cautiously, or shall I say
instinctively, he was held aloof, how sure not to abandon
the ground of evidence, by a hazardous incursion of
conjecture or imagination into the unknown. He would
indicate how near, and in what direction, lay the shaded
frontier; but dared not, did not seem even tempted, to
invade its'majesty of darkness.' -  JOHN  FOSrER
Observations on Robrt Hall.




APPENDIX.                 221
NOTE XIII. PAGE 100.
"You have letters, but no learning, that understand so
many languages, turn over so many volumes, and yet are
but asleep when all is done." - MILTON, to Salmasius.
NOTE XIV. PAGE IO03.
"I call, therefore, a complete and generous education
that which fits a man to perform, justly, liberally, and
magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public,
of peace and war." - MILTON, on Education.
NOTE XV. PAGE io6.
"Great scholar he was none, the Latin Testament,
gotten by heart, being the master-piece of his learning;
nor any studied lawyer, never long living, if admitted, in
the Inns of Court; nor experienced soldier, though necessity cast him on that calling when the Duke of Bourbon
besieged Rome; nor courtier in his youth, till bred in the
Court, as I may call it, of Cardinal Wolsey: and yet, that
of the lawyer in him so helped the scholar, that of the
soldier the lawyer, that of the courtier the soldier, and that




222                APPENDIX.
of the traveller so perfected all the rest, — being no
stranger to Germany, well acquainted with France, most
familiar with Italy-that the result of all together made
him for endowments eminent, not to say admirable."THOMAS FULLER: on Cromwell, Earl of Essex. Church
Hist. of Britain, cent. I6, book v.
NOTE XVI. PAGE IO8
"Of eloquence it has been eloquently said:'Eloquentia sicut flamma, materie alitur, motu excitatur, urendo
clarescit.' Mr. Pitt thus happily rendered the passage:'It is of eloquence as of a flame: it requires matter to
feed it, motion to excite it, and it brightens as it burns.'"
- Preface to Lord RusselPs Life of Charles 7ames For.
NOTEz XVII. PAGE II8.
Yet there are admirable sermons to which we
may almost apply Goethe's words about the
characters of Shakspeare, as quoted by Car.
lyle: -
" His' characters are like watches with dial-p.ates of
transparent crystal: they show you the hour, like others,




APPENDIX.                223
and the inward mechanism also is all visible." - On
Heroes, Lect. 3.
NOTE XVIII. PAGE 121.
It is hazardous to introduce extended descriptions of natural scenery into sermons, lest
the personal experience with which they are
connected be rather hidden than illustrated by
them; and lest - as has sometimes happened -
the sermon itself shall seem to have been constructed with reference to them, as if a house
had been planned to match a mantel-piece.
But, occasionally, they add to a discourse a
vivid and memorable moral force, as well as
rare pictorial beauty.
The following passages from a modern sermon illustrate, perhaps, both the danger and
the gain: —
"The more you lose your isolated self, and the
thoughts and feelings which cluster round it, and take
instead into you the thoughts and feelings of others, the




224                 APPENDIX.
richer and the more varied, the more complex and the
more interesting, and therefore the more vividly individual, becomes your being....
"It was my fortune last year, in going from Torcello
to Venice, to be overtaken by one of the whirlwinds
which sometimes visit the south. It was a dead calm,
but the whole sky, high overhead, was covered with a
pall of purple, sombre and smooth, but full of scarlet
threads. Across this, from side to side, as if darted by
two invisible armies, flew at every instant flashes of
forked lightning; but so lofty was the storm - and this
gave a hushed terror to the scene - that no thunder was
heard. Beneath this sky the lagoon water was dead
purple, and the weedy shoals left naked by the tide
dead scarlet. The only motion in the sky was far away
to the south, where a palm-tree of pale mist seemed to
rise from the water, and to join itself above to a selfinfolding mass of seething cloud. We reached a small
island and landed. An instant after, as I stood on the
parapet of the fortification, amid the breathless silence,
this pillar of cloud, ghostly white, and relieved against
the violet darkness of the sky, its edge as clear as if
cut with a knife, came rushing forward over the lagoon,
driven by the spirit of wind, which, hidden within it,
whirled and coiled its column into an eadless spiral




APPENDIX.                 225
The wind was only there, at its very edge there was not
a ripple; but as it drew near our island it seemed to
be pressed down upon the sea, and, unable to resist
the pressure, opened out like a fan in a foam of vapor.
Then with a shriek which made every nerve thrill with
excitement, the imprisoned wind leapt forth, the water
of the lagoon, beaten flat, was torn away to the depth
of half an inch, and as the cloud of spray and wind
smote the island, it trembled all over like a ship struck
by a great wave. We seemed to be in the very heart
of the universe at a moment when the thought of the
universe was most sublime..... It is in such a moment
when, as it were, you find your individuality outside of
you, in the being of the universe, that you are most
individual, and most able to feel your being, though not
to think it." - STOPFORD A. BROOKE: Sermon on Individuality.
NOTE XIX. PAGE 148.
"Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods,
and of every good to man: and he who would be blessed
and happy should be from the first a partaker of the truth,
that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then
he can be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves




226                 APPENDIX.
voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood, is a fool." — PLATO: Laws, book v, sec. 730.
Compare with this the loftier saying of a Chris.
tian philosopher:"The energies of the intellect, increase of insight, and
enlarging views, are necessary to keep alive the substantial faith in the heart. They are the appointed fuel to the
sacred fire. In the state of perfection all other faculties
may, perhaps, be swallowed up in love; but it is on the
wings of the cherubim, which the ancient Hebrew doctors
interpreted as meaning the powers and efforts of the
intellect, that we must first be borne up to the'pure
Empyrean;' and it must be seraphs, and not the hearts
of poor mortals, that can burn unfueled and self-fed." -
COLERIDGE: Lay Sermons, p. I 56, Burlington Ed.
NOTE XX. PAGE 152.
" This singular treatise contains a profusion of epithets,
new-created words, paraphrases, and repetitions, conveyed
in long and intricate periods. He clouds his meaning
by his gorgeous rhetoric: nevel content with illustrat.




APPENDIX.                227
ing his sentiment by an adapted simile, he is perpetually abandoning his subject to pursue his imagery. He
illustrates his illustrations, till he has forgotten both their
meaning and applicability. Hence his style is an endless
tissue of figures, which he never leaves till he has converted every metaphor into a simile, and every simile into
a wearisome episode..... The whole is a confused medley of great and exuberant genius, wasting and burlesquing uncommon powers." — TURNER'S Hist. Anaglo
Saxons, vol. iii., pp. 35I, 352. (On Aldhelm, Abbot of
Malmsbury.)
NOTE XXI. PAGE 154.
This reference to Dr. Emmons, made upon
the imperfect recollection of the moment, does
not represent with entire correctness his remark;
and as he was a very exact man it is better to
give his apothegm with exactness —
" Style is only the frame to hold our thoughts. It is
like the sash of a window; a heavy sash will obscure the
light. The object is to have as little sash as will hold the
lights, that we may not think of the frame, but have the
most light." - Prof: Park's Memoir, p. 328.




228              APPENDIX.
The Doctor himself did not approve of preaching without notes; and if he had foreseen that
he was ever to be referred to in a lecture upon
the subject it would very likely have added fresh
emphasis - if that were possible - to his mild
declaration that " the most important requisites
for an extemporaneous preacher are ignorance,
impudence, and presumption." Yet his biographer says of one celebrated passage in a sermon
of his: " There are internal signs that his lightning-like comments may have been made extempore in that paragraph. The electric spirit of
them has vanished from the words as they appear
in type." (p. 330).
Even with him, then, it was the unwritten
word, not the written, which flamed and burned.
NOTE XXII. PAGE 156.
The whole familiar and noble passage may
well be quoted: —
"For me, readers, although I cannot say that I am
utterly untrain'd in those rules which best rhetoricians




APPENDIX.                 229
have given, or unacquainted with those examples which
the prime authors of eloquence have written, in any
learned tongue; yet true Eloquence I find to be none but
the serious and hearty love of truth: and that whose
mind soever is fully possest with a fervent desire to
know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse
the knowledge of them into others, when such a man
would speak, his words (by what I can express) like so
many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command, and in well-order'd files, as he would wish, fall
aptly into their own places." -Apology for Smectymnuus.
NOTE XXIII. PAGE 158.
"The greatest thoughts are wronged, if not linked
with beauty; and they win their way most surely and
deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural
and fit attire..... Thus outward beauty is akin to something deeper and unseen, is the reflection of spiritual
attributes."- CHANNING: Works, vol. ii. p. 366.
NOTE XXIV. PAGE I72.
"Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths
of our life, never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate




230                APPENDIX.
from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever
that shall go, and are of their nature Divine and immor.
tal." - THACKERAY, Esmond, book iii. chap. vi.
NOTE XXV. PAGE 174.
"Sooty Manchester, -it too is built on the infinite
abysses; over-spanned by the skyey firmaments; and
there is birth in it, and death in it; -and it is every whit
as wonderful, as fearful, unimaginable, as the oldest
Salem or prophetic city. Go or stand, in what time, in
what place we will, are there not Immensities, Eternities,
over us, around us, in us:'Solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal
Goal of all mortal:
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent.'"
CARLYLE: Past and Present, book iii. chap. xv.
NOTE XXVI. PAGE I76.
"In all the accounts one reads of myrrh, frankincense,
4nd other'medicinal gums,' one always finds different




APPENDIX.                 231
qualities mentioned; the best being what exndes spontaneously, and not by tapping or boiling down. And so it is
with apothegms. If a man taps himself to draw them
out, he will be the more likely to sacrifice truth to antithesis." -Letter of AbP. Whatey: Life, vol. ii. p. 3I2.
NOTE XXVII. PAGE I78.
Milton's good word for occasional sarcasm is
certainly just: —
"Even this vein of laughing, as I could produce out
of grave authors, hath ofttimes a strong and sinewy
force in teaching and confuting." - MILTON: on Remonstrant's Defence.
But the maxim of Lord Bacon seems always
the best one for the pulpit: —
" As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be
riaagqo  tom it; nma*Xy,  rtleQ, Batten  I state,
great persons, any man's present business of importance,
and any case that deserveth pity. Yet there be some
that think their wits have been asleep, except they dart




232                APPENDIX.
out something that is piquant, and to the quick. That is
a vein which should be bridled:
"Parce, puer, stimulis, et fortius utere loris."BACON'S Essays, xxxii.
NOTE XXVIII. PAGE 203.
" The rugged gentleness, the wit whose glory
Flash'd like a sword, because its edge was keen,
The fine antithesis, the flowing story; —
Beneath such things the sainthood is not seen,
" Till in the hours when the wan hand is lifted
To take the bread and wine, through all the mist
Of mortal weariness our eyes are gifted
To see a quiet radiance caught from Christ i
" Till from the pillow of the thinker, lying
In weakness, comes the teaching, then best taught,
That the true crown for any soul in dying
Is Christ, not genius, and is faith, not thought.




APPENDIX.                 233
"0  Death, for all thy darkness, grand unveiler
Of lights on lights above Life's shadowy place,
Just as the night, that makes our small world paler,
Shows us the star-sown amplitudes of space!
u 0 strange discovery! Land that knows no bounding,
Isles far off hail'd, bright seas without a breath,
What time the white sail of the soul is rounding
The misty cape - the promontory Death! "
REV. WILLIAM ALEXANDER:
te D ath of A rchbsohj  Whaktd