the polish of a
fine literary taste, a thing easily incorporated into the tissue of a
lengthened sermon? Think you, did Maclaurin's well-known _Sermon on
the Cross_ cost him little trouble? or the not less noble sermon of
Sir Matthew Hale, on _Christ and Him crucified_? Look, we beseech you,
to your New Testaments, and see if there be ought slovenly in the
style, or loose and pointless in the thinking, of the model sermons
given you there. The discourse addressed by our Saviour from the mount
to the people was a sermon; as was also the magnificent address of
Paul to the Athenians, where he chose as his text the inscription on
one of their altars, 'To the unknown God.' There may be a practical
and most mischievous heterodoxy embodied in the preacher's idea of
sermons, as certainly as he may embody a heterodoxy theoretic and
doctrinal in the sermons themselves.

The ordinary course of establishing a Church in any country, as
specially shown by New Testament history and that of the Reformation,
is first and mainly through the preaching of the word. An earnest,
eloquent man--a Peter in Jerusalem--a Paul at Athens, on Mars Hill--a
John Knox in Edinburgh or St. Andrews--a George Whitfield in some open
field or market-place of Britain or America--or a Thomas Chalmers in
some metropolitan pulpit, Scotch or English--addresses himself to the
people.

There is a strange power in the words, and they cannot but listen; and
then the words begin to tell. The heart is affected, the judgment
convinced, the will influenced and directed: ancient beliefs are, as
the case may be, modified, resuscitated, or destroyed; new or revived
convictions take the place of previous convictions, inadequate or
erroneous; and thus churches are planted, and the face of society
changed. We limit ourselves here to what--being strictly natural in
the process--would operate, if skilfully applied, as directly on the
side of error as of truth. It is the first essential of a book, that
it be interesting enough to be read; and of a preacher, whatever his
creed, that he be sufficiently engaging to be attentively listened to;
and without this preliminary merit, no other merit, however great, is
of any avail whatever. And when a Church possesses it in any great
degree, it is sure to spread and increase. Are there churches in the
Establishment which, though thinned by the Disruption, have now all
their seats let, and are crammed every Sabbath to the doors? If so, b