ve known some sad instances in point here. But taking that for
granted, assuming the good sense and sympathy of the preacher, I am
quite sure that the most eloquent sermon, adapted to _any_ audience, is
far less likely to be blessed and used by our Lord than the sermon which
is penetrated with the Pastor's personal intimacy with _that particular_
audience, and which goes therefore straight from him to them.

It has been well said that preaching may be described as "truth through
personality"; not merely the presentation somehow of so many facts and
thoughts, but the presentation of them through the medium of a living
man, who brings into the pulpit his heart, his character, his
experience, and so gives out his message. We may add to this suggestive
dictum that the true pastoral sermon is also "truth _to_ personalities";
the living man's delivery of the message to living men and women whose
life, more or less, he knows. And so it presupposes some real amount of
pastoral intercourse, intelligently brought to bear on pulpit work.

PREPARE SERMON IN THE PARISH.

I linger a little over these thoughts, though they are little more than
introductory. For experience tells me how easily, in these days, the
Clergyman is tempted to dislocate his "parish work" from his sermons, to
the great loss of one or both parts of his duty. And if once he begins
to think of his sermons as a thing really apart, which must be got
through somehow, but rather as a mere duty than as a vital ministerial
function, the results will be sad for the sermons. So I lay stress on
the thought that the sermon-preparation ought to go on not only in the
study, over the Word, but in the parish, over the hearers of it. The
more constantly this is recollected, and put in practice, the less fear
will there be that the sermon will be a weariness either to people or to
preacher.

"LABOUR IN THE WORD."

But let me, however, entreat my younger Brother, by any and every means,
to watch and pray against a slack or low view of his function as a
preacher. From very many quarters at the present day we are invited to
slight our sermon-labour. Sometimes it is "work," organization,
committees, which is set against the sermon; sometimes it is the
reading-desk and the Communion Table--the liturgical functions of the
Ministry. Let pastoral activities and holy rites alike have ample place
in our thoughts and work; but for Christ's sake, my Brother in the
ministry of the Word a