ispensable. Only, they are methods which have their risks, and must
be used with care. Illustrations are apt to overwhelm the thing
illustrated, the moment much detail is allowed; and they are apt to go
on three feet, or even upon one, instead of upon four; and they may be
drawn from quarters too remote to strike the hearers with effect.
Anecdotes have the same risks; and, besides, they need, if they are to
be used aright, to be carefully sifted and verified. I say this not to
disparage what in some preachers' hands is a most powerful and also a
most delicate weapon; yet the caution is certainly needed, especially by
younger men.

INTEREST OF EXPLANATION.

But the surest secrets of interesting preaching lie deeper than anecdote
and illustration. One of them, a very simple one to state, is clearness
of thought, and of the expression and explanation of thought. I entreat
my Brother to be an _explanatory_ preacher, by which I mean, not that he
should treat his _brethren_ as if they were his _children_ (unless
indeed it is a children's sermon), but that he should handle familiar
religious terms with the resolve to make them _live and speak_ to the
ordinary hearer. Nothing is more opiate-like than a sentence which is
unreal to the hearer because it is mere phraseology. Nothing can be made
more interesting than familiar phraseology (supposing it to be true and
important) so treated as to speak its meaning out fresh and living in
modern ears.

INTEREST OF EXPOSITION.

Another deep and unfailing secret of interest, so that it be used
intelligently and prayerfully, is close akin to this last. It lies in
the right sort of _expository_ preaching. I have in my mind such
exposition as will be found in Dr Vaughan's sermons on the Philippian
Epistle. The charm and power of those sermons lie, I know, very much in
the extraordinary excellence, the _curiosa simplicitas_, of their
literary style, so unpretentious and so masterly. But it lies also in
the fact that the preacher takes us over a familiar Scripture passage,
verse by verse, phrase by phrase, and translates it into the dialect of
present circumstances. Let me heartily commend this sort of preaching
from my own parochial experience in past days. In a congregation
consisting chiefly of the poor, I found that the most intelligent and
sustained interest was excited by a series of Sunday evening sermons on
a selected chapter or paragraph, in which the aim was first to
paraphrase