o to speak, and, fastening on the mind,
insist on being preached upon. A sermon on such a text is nearly
always successful; and a wise man will, therefore, take care to garner
such texts when they occur to him. He will underline them in his
Bible, or, better still, enter them in a note-book kept for the
purpose, adding a few words perhaps to indicate the first lines of
thought which have occurred to him. These notes may be multiplied from
time to time; and, when the minister turns to a page which has been
thus filled, he will often find his sermon nearly made to his
hand.[30] Dr. Wendell Holmes tells of Emerson that he kept such a
note-book for subjects on which he might lecture, and for suggestions
of lines of thought which he might follow out. He called it his
Savings Bank, because, though the payments into it were minute, they
gradually swelled to riches; and passages which his hearers and
readers supposed to be outbursts of sudden literary creation were
really the results of slow accumulation. If this was necessary for
even a genius like Emerson it will be far more necessary for the
ordinary man. The gold of thought has generally to be collected as
gold dust.

2. But this already brings me to the second stage of this natural
history, which is, that the preacher must be a master of Human Words.
The message from God which we carry is to become a message to men, and
therefore we must know how to introduce it successfully to their
notice. Strong as our own conviction may be, yet it may be crude and
formless; and, before it can become the conviction of others, it must
take a shape which will arouse their attention. It may belong to a
region of thought with which they are unfamiliar, and it has to be
brought near, until it enters the circle of their own ideas.

This is the problem of the composition of the sermon, whether this
means the writing of it out or the arrangement of the materials in the
memory in preparation for delivery. And many rules might be given to
help at this point.

One often recommended is to keep the audience in view to which the
composition is to be addressed. If by this is meant that the writer,
as he sits at his desk, should try to conjure up in his imagination
the benches of the church and their occupants, I do not know whether
it is a practicable rule or not. But if it means that the preacher, as
he composes his sermon, should keep in view the circumstances of his
hearers--their stage of cult