eternal and holy message a point and closeness of application
which will ensure its "coming home," as God gives the blessing.

TEMPTATIONS TO FORGET THIS.

It needs thought and care to keep the parish and the sermon thus _en
rapport_. But such thought and care is infinitely well worth taking.
The Clergyman who longs to be useful for his Lord in the highest degree
he can be, cannot possibly think lightly of his sermons. Yet he may be
tempted, half unconsciously, to treat them too lightly in practices,
particularly if he is beset with a consciousness that he is not "a born
preacher," or if he stands in the opposite danger of having a "fatal"
facility of speech. Let the Clergyman only remember that his sermon, his
public delivery of instruction, of exhortation, in the Lord's name, is
not to be an exhibition of his own powers of thought or utterance, but a
faithful message-bearing to his own flock, in the light of what he knows
of Christ and the Word on the one side, and of the needs of the flock on
the other, and he will find a most useful encouragement, or a most
useful corrective, as the need may be. "O my Lord, I am not eloquent,"
[Exod. iv. 10.] will be no disheartening thought, as he carries to the
pulpit the ever-growing weight of pastoral experience, all giving point
and freshness to the unalterable message. And the secret temptation to
think the sermon a light thing because mere words come easy, will be
powerfully counteracted in the other case not only by contact with the
realities of life in the daily work, but by remembering that the sermon
will have to do with not an abstract audience but _these particular_
souls and lives thus laid on the man's conscience and affections.

THE PASTOR PREACHES TO THOSE PARTICULAR HEARERS.

Let me repeat it as earnestly as I can. The sermon, if it is to be what
it should be, should be affected at every point by the facts of the
preacher's own inner life, and by those of his intercourse with his
people. Those facts must, of course, be thoughtfully weighed and
handled. The tact which is so important in a Pastor, and which is best
learned and developed in the school of Christ's love, will see
instinctively how to apply in preaching the experience gained in prayer,
in conversation, in every branch of ministering life. We shall remember
that indefinite harm, not good, may be done when a man, particularly a
young man, unwisely preaches what may fairly seem to be personalities; I
ha