PREFACE. HESE Sermons have been drawn from the THESE Author by the importunity of friends. He has been slow to yield to their desire, because he knows how much there is in a sermon which cannot be published. If it is true, it is "a building of God" for the time, "not made with hands ;" and neither hands nor pens can preserve it. "The grace of the fashion of it perisheth," or survives only in the memory and life of the hearer. The elastic obedient words seem cooled and hardened on the printed page. Scarcely any attempt has been made to compensate in any way-by alteration of structure or addition of thought for this inevitable loss. These Sermons were written for preaching in the ordinary course of the author's ministry, and they are now published nearly as they were written. This has been done advisedly, and the Author will achieve all he hopes and wishes, if α those who are kind enough to read them shall find in them any measure of that spiritual earnestness and simplicity which he desired and endeavoured after in the delivery of them. The title of the book, taken from the sermon which happens to be first, will not be inappropriate, if in any degree they help to freshen or nourish divine life in the soul. May the Master himself use them as fuel for that sacred flame which is first kindled in the heart by his own matchless love, and which burns to immortality. HIGHBURY NEW PARK, November 1863. |