course. Not often is a
sentence the better for an "_and_" at the beginning. Many a
"_therefore_" and "_because_" are well away, if you would speak with
freedom and vigour.

AVOID RHETORICAL DICTION.

(_d_) Avoid altogether such touches of expression as characterise verse,
or rhetorical prose. I find in one sermon the sentence, "_Think you_ St
Paul trembled at the prospect?" Please re-write this, and say, "_Do you
think_ St Paul was afraid?" For you certainly would not say, speaking
however gravely, to your friend, "Think you that we shall have a fine
day to-morrow?" Rhetorical phrases rarely give an impression of
practical reality.

(_e_) Do not speak in the pulpit as if you were writing notes for an
edition of the Epistles. What does the labourer (and what do many
hearers more highly educated than he) think when you say, on Rom. v. 1,
that "_weighty manuscript authority gives another reading_"? And what
does he think you mean when you talk about "_Sheol_"? By the way, when
you quote Scripture in the pulpit, passingly, to a general
congregation, I would advise you to quote not the Revised Version, but
the Authorized, which will surely be "_the_ English Bible" for many long
days yet. Unless you have before you some special difference between the
two Versions, on which you can _stop to speak explicitly_, quote the
familiar (and inimitable) diction of 1611.

PREACH WHAT CAN BE REPORTED.

(_f_) Prepare your sermon, and preach it, so that it shall be _easy to
report_. One sermon here before me would be as hard as possible to
retail at home. It is on Rom. v. 1, and it says some excellent things
upon it. But it brings in holiness of heart where the text speaks only
of acceptance of person, and it mingles the two topics so ingeniously
together that the impression is seriously complicated. Think of the
pious daughter yonder in church, going home to her infirm old mother,
and trying to answer the question, "What did the gentleman preach about
to-night?" Let us do our best to preach sermons which are not only
sound, but portable.

(_g_) Take care to keep the sermon in _tune with the text_. Here is a
manuscript on Psal. v. 12, a verse of exultant joy; but the last
passage of the sermon, the passage which ought to concentrate the whole
message, is full of solemn _warning_. Warn by all means; do not forget
to sound the watchman's trumpet. [Ezek. xxxiii.] But sound it in the
right place.

CUT THE PREFACE SHORT.

(_h_) Here