rote; but when the preacher gets into the pulpit he should not be careful to observe the faces of his hearers, or troubie himself with thinking what the more intelligent of his Sunday-class teachers may say of his discourse. Let him forget himself in his subject. Let his one desire and object be to impress it upon the minds of his audience, and not to produce a finished discourse. Clever elocution takes the heart and soul out of a sermon.

"And I brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech, or of man's wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power."

One of the faults which we find with Dr. Guthrie's preaching is that he presents too much for consideration in one discourse. He fills our platter too full, and gives us more than we can properly digest. Take, for example, his picture of sin :

"Look now at sin. Pluck off that painted mask, and turn upon her face the Lamp of God's Word. We start-it reveals a death's head! I stay not

to quote texts descriptive of sin. It is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting; everything that man hates a load of curses and calamities, beneath 'whose crushing, most intolerable pressure, the whole creation groaneth.'

"Name me the evil that springs not from this root-the crime that I may not lay at its door. Who is the hoary sexton that digs man a grave? Who is the painted temptress that steals his virtue? Who is the murderess that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress that first deceives, and then damns his soul?-Sin, who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth.

"Who breaks the hearts of parents? Who brings old men's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave ?-Sin. Who, by a more hideous metamorphosis than Ovid ever framed, changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters, and their fathers into more than Herods, the murderers of their own innocents ?-Sin.

"Who casts the apple of discord on housebold hearths? Who lights the torch of war, and bears it blazing over trembling lands? Who by divisions in the church rends Christ's seamless robe?-Sin.

"Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep, and delivers up the strength of God

into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who with

winning smiles on her face, honied flattery on her tongue, stands in the door to offer the sacred rights of hospitality, and, when suspicion sleeps treacherously pierces our temples with a nail? What fair syren is this who, seated on a rock, by the deadly pool, smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray, and flings her arms around our neck, to leap with us into perdition ?-Sin."

This is all very striking, but it lays open too many lines of thought for one sermon. "Propose one point in your discourse," says Dr. Paley, "and stick to it. A man never carries away more than one impression." Dr. Guthrie presents too many pictures to the eye at one time. A sermon may contain too much, as well as too little. As a general rule, a sermon should contain no more than one leading thought, around which the others should revolve, like the planets round the sun, attracted, and held in their proper spheres, by the central luminary; one leading thought which should shine out like the principal jewel of a crown.

Dr. Guthrie had another fault, he travelled too

far for his illustrations. He did not find them springing up at his feet, as our Lord found the flowers of the field. He went searching, or botanising, for exotics, and when he found them he "booked "" them for future use. The Rev. Robert Hall said that the late Sir James Mackintosh had an excellent memory, but no imagination; but that his figures of speech and illustrations were always good, as he had good taste. He compares his mind to a wardrobe, where you can take down, as from a peg, the garment which best suits your fancy. Perhaps there is no work that excels Doctor Whateley's Logic, in the aptness and excellence of its illustrations, but we get the perfume of the cedar-wood about them all.

Mr. Rogers, in his life of John Howe, says: "His mind, absorbed by his subject, is sure to stimulate his imagination, sufficiently to enable him to supply, spontaneously, those illustrations which render the writer's meaning either more clear or more impressive, but leaves little leisure to seareh for curious or elaborate ornament."

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CHAPTER VII.

DR. CHALMERS.

DOCTOR CHALMERS was, without doubt, one of our greatest and most eloquent preachers. He soars on some occasions, like the eagle, "the Bird of Jove," into a pure atmosphere where few are able to follow him.

Doctor Chalmers is remarkable for the beautiful unity of thought which prevails throughout all his writings you have the same idea, but widening and enlarging, from the beginning to the end, like the sun rising above the horizon, or the moon leading forth and apparently lighting up the whole host of stars. Doctor Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses, which were first published as a distinct volume, contain but one great leading thought, suggested by the 3rd and 4th verses of the 8th Psalm : "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars