of Scotland, committed his discourses to
memory, and delivered them in a torrent of Godly emotion.

In preparing my sermons my custom was, after taking some rest on Monday,
to get into my study early on Tuesday morning. To every student the best
hours of the day are those before the sun has reached the meridian. Then
the mind is the most clear and vigorous. I have never in my life
prepared sermons a dozen times after my supper. Severe mental work in
the evening is apt to destroy sound sleep; thousands of brain workers
are wrecked by insomnia. To secure freedom from needless interruption I
pinned on my study door "_Very Busy_." This had the wholesome effect of
shutting out all time-killers, and of shortening necessary calls of
those who had some important errand. Instead of leaving the selection of
my topic to the risk of any contingency, I usually chose my text on
Tuesday morning, and laid the keel of the sermon. I kept a large
note-book in which I could enter any passage of Scripture that would
furnish a good theme for pulpit consumption. I also found it a good
practice to jot down thoughts that occurred to me on any important topic
that I could use when I came to prepare my sermons. By this method I had
a treasury of texts from which I could draw every week. Let my readers
be careful to notice that word "Text." I have known men to prepare an
elaborate essay, theological, ethical or sociological, and then to perch
a text from the Bible on top of it.

"Preach my word" does not signify the clapping of a few syllables as a
figure-head on a long treatise spun out of a preacher's brain. The best
discourses are not manufactured, they are a _growth_. God's inspired and
infallible Book must furnish the text. The connection between every good
sermon and its text is just as vital as the connection between a
peach-tree and its root. Sometimes an indolent minister tries to palm
off an old sermon for a pretended new one by changing the text, but this
shallow device ought to expose itself as if he should decapitate a dog
and undertake to clap on the head of some other animal. Intelligent
audiences see through such tricks and despise them. "Be sure your sin
will find you out." When a passage from the Holy Scripture has been
planted as a root and well watered with prayer, the sermon should spring
naturally from it. The central thought of the text being the central
thought of the sermon and all argument, all instruction and exhortatio