PLANS OF THOUGHT FOR VILLAGE PREACHERS. BY A COUNTRY PASTOR. THECA LONDON: HOULSTON & STONEMAN, 65, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1848. 1496. PREFACE. . THE Author of this Volume can feel the deepest sympathy for that class of persons for whose particular benefit he has prepared the following pages, having himself for many years been engaged in the same arduous work, of carrying the word of life to the towns and villages around. He knows the manifold difficulties of their position, having shared them; and their want of opportunities for careful reading, and lengthened preparations for their self-denying labours: toiling as they are wont-many of them at leastday by day, at some mechanical employment, for the bread that perisheth; and often jaded and vexed with their multiplied engagements, they are but ill prepared for calm and dispassionate investigation, nor always possess the necessary facilities for composing suitable and ever-varying themes for their Sabbath occupations—often to them the day of hardest toil. There has always appeared to the Author, a strange want of sympathy in the Churches towards these disinterested labourers in the vineyard of Christ. How often are they pursuing their way, exposed to all the vicissitudes of the weather, for many long and wearying miles, to execute their most self-denying, unwavering, and often unappreciated and unrequited toil; at an endurance of physical exertion which nothing could prompt them to undergo, but love to Christ and the souls of men; and often at a pecuniary sacrifice, which no impurer motive could justify them in making; whilst other members of the same Churches are sitting at their ease in the house of God, and quietly enjoying the repose of the Sabbath, but who seldom-it is to be feared-cast a look of sympathy on the Village Preachers, and still less pray for their success, or pecuniarily assist them in the obtainment of those appliances which are requisite for the adequate discharge of their commendable work. These things ought not so to be. It is for these men the Author has written, having himself felt the want of such assistance; not as a mere copyist or verbal imitator, but as suggestive of ideas which he could clothe in his own language, and illustrate with his own familiar imagery-gems of thought, which he could manipulate after his own fashion; and rays of light, which he could concentrate to advantage on some useful theme of Christian doctrine or practice, adapted to the various audiences he was privileged to address. Go on, then, ye patriotic bands of God's sacramental host. But for you our world would have been a moral waste, still more desolate than it is; our villages would have been left in comparative destitution of the word of life, and the Church of Christ would have been much more diminutive than it now is. And though unrequited and unappreciated now, yet "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed towards his name; in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister." In committing this work to the press, the Author is fully conscious that there are already many of a similar character before the Public; but against many, two objections-almost insuperable-arise in the minds of those for whom this is prepared; they are either not sufficiently portable, or they are inconvenient in price; which |