ject so handled is more agreeable, and more likely to fix itself on the memory, than if the materials were drawn solely from the preacher's invention.

Text-sermons conceived and wrought in this manner are equal to any; and they have in them this great advantage, that they are built on a Scriptural foundation, and serve to impress important passages on the minds of the hearers; so that whenever they recur, the whole train of reasoning is likely to be brought back, and the impression revived. The disadvantage of this sort of sermons is, that they are difficult to manage; and, if ill managed, produce a bad effect. What can be more uninteresting and bald, than a text split up like the following by an old divine: Ephes. v. 2. "The text presents to our view seven considerable circumstances. 1st, Who? Christ. 2ndly, What? gave. 3dly, Whom? Himself. 4thly, To whom? to God. 5thly, For whom? for us. 6thly, After what manner? an offering and sacrifice. 7thly, Of what effect? of a sweet smelling savour." Here are the most important truths rendered uninteresting, not to say ludicrous. It is a grand fault to fritter away a subject by too great attention to words. "That common practice of dissecting the text into minute parts, and enlarging on them severally, is a great occasion of impertinency and roving from the chief sense." "The parson's method," says Herbert, "in handling a text, consists in two parts,—first, the plain and evident declaration of the meaning of the text; and secondly, some chosen observations drawn out of the whole text, as it lies entire and unbroken in Scripture itself. This he thinks natural, and sweet, and grave; whereas, the other way of crumbling the text into small parts, as the person speaking, and spoken to, the subject and the object, and the like, hath in it neither sweet

1 Bishop Wilkins.

ness, nor gravity, nor variety; since the words apart are not Scripture, but a dictionary, and may be considered alike in all the Scriptures." Even without absolutely frittering and crumbling the text, a bad effect is often produced by so dividing it into heads, which are not closely connected one with the other, that the subject becomes two-fold or threefold, instead of single. Instead of discussing a text as a whole, an inexperienced preacher will divide it into distinct parts, and make each a separate vehicle for remarks, without sufficient or interesting connexion or dependency. This is a very common error.

any

Another disadvantage in textual preaching is, that in the desire of keeping close to the subject, a preacher will sometimes give a jejune and uninteresting discourse, omitting highly important matter, or more convincing arguments, on the subject in hand, because his text does not suggest them.

It is, however, true that these blemishes are not essential to the sort of sermons we are discussing: they are faults rather in the execution than in the essence. In order to avoid them you must be careful in your choice of a text, and keep in view the principles which I have suggested in this and the foregoing letters, and which I may now briefly recapitulate namely, first consider the spirit of the text; as, whether it be mild or severe, &c., and transfuse the same character into your sermon. Secondly, consider the form of the text, whether it be argumentative or didactic, &c., and endeavour to throw the discourse into something of the same shape, by explication or observation. Thirdly, consider the main point and scope in the text, and keep closely to that, having it always in your eye. Fourthly, do not clumsily divide the text according to the precise order

"Il n'y a plus d'unité véritable; ce sont deux ou trois discours différens, qui ne sont unis que par une liaison arbitraire."-Fénélon, Dialogues sur l'Eloquence.

in which it stands, but select the principal points, and arrange them so that they shall have a proper connexion and dependency; that the former may naturally lead to the latter, and that they may rise one above another in interest and importance.

LETTER XXVII.

ON DISCUSSION-SUBJECT-SERMONS.

THERE is a great difference between the sermons preached by the early divines of our Protestant English Church and those of the present day.' Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and others of our old preachers, when they took a subject in hand, would not leave it, until it was thoroughly exhausted. If a good hour or more one Sunday would not suffice, they would attack the same subject again the next. Hence, it came to pass, that while in their compositions there is an immense fund of elaborate and important matter, a fund of which modern divines have most freely and profitably availed themselves,-there is, at the same time, much which to modern congregations is uninteresting and void of persuasiveness. Immensely valuable as are the writings of many of the old English Fathers, for their sound reasoning, depth of thought, fertility of invention, copiousness of illustration, and other various excellences, and much to be recommended to the young student on all these accounts, I should not hold them up as models for the structure of a sermon. Modern sermons are more on the model of those of the primitive Fathers. Instead of endeavouring

1 See a letter by W. T. H. in the British Magazine for September, 1834.

to exhaust a subject, it is the object of modern preachers to choose out, and use, such arguments and topics as shall be most interesting and most persuasive. They look, in short, not to their subject, but to their hearers.

When, therefore, we mention subject-sermons as one of our principal divisions, we do not speak of that sort of sermons which we read in the books of our old Protestant divines; for these, however well adapted to the taste of the times in which they were preached, would be entirely distasteful to modern congregations; but we speak of a distinct class which at present occupies a very prominent place in the Church of England pulpit.

Subject-sermons are a class which embraces a vast variety both as to the execution and matter, agreeing only in this distinguishing characteristic-that the subject, or rather the division and materials, are not derived from the text itself, but from some extraneous source: the text is often little more than a customary form. Suppose, for instance, your text to be, "Let a man examine himself;" or, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch;" you might enter into a general discussion of all those points in which self-examination and watchfulness are needed.

It will often happen to you in the course of your ministerial duties to wish to address your parishioners on some particular subject. A Queen's letter has arrived, and you wish to set forth the object of the society to which it relates; or you have to give notice of a confirmation, and desire to explain the nature of the rite; or you think it right to address the young persons, who have been confirmed, on the duties of the situation in which they are placed; or in your intercourse with your parishioners, you have found them ignorant of some important doctrine, or deficient in

1 1 Cor. xi. 28.

2 Mark xiii. 37.