THE ITINERANTS' CLUB.

THE PREACHER AND SERMON-BUILDING.

In previous numbers of the Review we promised to say more on the subject of sermon-building. Indeed, what thus far has been said is chiefly destructive, not constructive; and he is a poor critic or instructor who does nothing but tear things in pieces. "That bee is uncivil which stings and makes no honey."

Our first suggestion as to sermon-building is this: The successful sermonizer must be a good man. The position is easily defensible, that in proportion as the preacher is in right relations with himself, with his fellow-men, and with his Creator, other things being equal, will be the perfection of his sermon-building. If the preacher's aims are selfish, or if he is hungrier for popular applause than for the souls of his people, his intellectual faculties will wizen and his sermons will be of the lean kind. He will get the parsonage to live in, perhaps, and his bread and butter, but no more. On the other hand, the stimulation that comes from a good life and from a lofty purpose to honor God and benefit mankind energizes all the intellectual faculties, and even rejuvenates them. The mind under such stimulation outdoes itself; it can run without weariness and walk without faintness.

But it is asked if all successful literary workers are good men, and if the mere literary work on the sermon cannot be well done even if the man is not good, or if not swayed by a lofty moral purpose. Our reply is, that the literary part of a sermon is far from being the whole of it.

We are aware that Hume, Gibbon, Lord Byron, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, and several others are held up as examples of successful literary men who have antagonized in theory, and some of them in practice, the principles of goodness as taught in the Bible.

We can think of no Methodist preacher so highly endowed that he can hope for permanent success unless goodness lies at the basis of his char

acter.

Gibbon's insincerity and licentious thought have long since been his condemnation, though in possession of natural qualifications in some respects unequaled. Byron's genius was transcendent, but his bad thought and life were well-nigh his ruin. These men, and others like them, would not have met any measure of success if their talents had been ordinary. In the congress of ages men are voted down unless they are good men, and unless they teach and write in harmony with the ethics of eternity. Any thing self-degrading, injurious to man physically, mentally, morally, or any thing impious, or any thing antagonistic to the common judgment of Christendom (when Christendom is biblical), or any thing issuing from a bad heart, (for how can sweet waters flow from bitter fountains?) will not be tolerated. A thunder-bolt is at the breast of the man who is wrong in his life and in his words.

It may not be out of place to dwell a moment longer on this thought. The names pre-eminent in poetry are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton; the names pre-eminent in music are Mozart, Handel, Haydn, and Beethoven; the names pre-eminent in ornamental art are Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; the names pre-eminent in oratory are Demosthenes, Pericles, and Cicero, and, in our own country, Webster, Clay, and Phillips; the names pre-eminent in national affairs are Washington, Lincoln, and Grant.

As we look through this list we find men who were not perfect-few men are perfect-but we find not one who was not religious, some of them eminently so. We find not one whose productions were aimed against Bible truth and the public good; and those productions of theirs which have the firmest hold on the world are those which harmonize with the common judgment of Christendom when Christendom is biblical.

We give two incidents that let us into the secret of many a man's power and success. When Wendell Phillips was fourteen years of age he heard Lyman Beecher preach a sermon in which were these words: "Young man, you belong to God." The youth went to his room, locked the door, threw himself on the floor, and before he left the room was enabled to say, "O God, I do belong to thee." That thought, and others awakened by it, were no doubt the secret of the noble life and the wonderful power of Wendell Phillips.

John G. Whittier was at one time the editor of the New England Review, a Whig publication. He was called on to reply to an attack made by William Lloyd Garrison on Mr. Clay for being a slave-holder. Mr. Whittier had completed his reply just as his friend, Mr. Morgan, entered the office. Mr. Whittier seemed greatly agitated. He handed the manuscript to Mr. Morgan, with the request that he should look it over at his leisure. When it was returned Mr. Whittier asked Mr. Morgan how he liked the article. He replied that it was a most admirable and complete response to the great agitator's argument. Mr. Whittier then took the manuscript in his hands and tore it into fragments, remarking, with the intensest feeling, "Mr. Morgan, I cannot enter into controversy with that man. He has God's eternal truth on his side."

If the preacher would have his intellectual faculties work at their best —if he would build sermons worthy to be called such-let him first of all be a good man, consecrated to God and intent on benefiting his fellowSuch is the first preparation for sermon-building.

men.

THE SELECTION OF BOOKS TO READ.

WE closed a previous article on the above topic with the suggestion that as to the selection of books every person in his own breast has a guide of much value.

If this is true, then manifestly the standards of choice and of rejection are not and cannot be the same with all persons, nor the same with a given person at all times.

9-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.

"Do you read novels?" said a bright young lady to a lawyer.

"I did," was the reply, "until my experience surpassed the wildest

Of course, that lawyer's tastes and instincts henceforth would guide him to other fields than romance for his reading. And as a rule we may say that the craving for light literature does not last, provided one is not reading pernicious books.

Extending through a series of many years it has been found that four fifths of the books taken from the Harvard College library by freshmen are works of fiction, while the sophomores take but two fifths fiction, the juniors and seniors but one fifth, the remaining four fifths being about equally divided between essays, biography, history, and poetry. This would indicate strongly that as a rule the taste for fiction is initiatorya step only in a journey.

To some minds no book on earth is of so great importance as the Bible. Its histories, its biographies, its prophecies, its doctrinal discourses, its scheme of redemption, and its many other revelations make it the book of books the one book. So said Sir Walter Scott, and so have thought a multitude of others. But not all think thus. In the meantime, it will do no good to be impatient with the one who does not prefer the reading of the Bible to that of all other books.

It is said that the first thing which the philosopher Zeno did on reaching Athens from Cyprus was to go to an Attic book-stall and purchase the writings of Xenophon. Only a few people, however, would have made that their first business on reaching Athens.

Benjamin Franklin tells us that Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good, though tattered and torn, with several leaves missing, afforded him indescribable delight in his boyhood, and had a molding influence on all his after-life. A boy of singular taste! is the exclamation of not a few.

The late F. W. Robertson, one of the most brilliant of preachers, writes thus: "I turn aside from merely inviting books, but Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, and Jonathan Edwards have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution." Only a few preachers put such tonic as this into their blood.

Mr. Emerson somewhere has said that Plutarch and Montaigne are books on which he fed in his youth with irresistible attraction. But not a few youths would starve to death on that kind of diet. These men, Zeno, Franklin, Robertson, Emerson, and others like them belong, it is apparent, to an exceptional class. What they can do, others for the present cannot, but the cases illustrate certain points. Though a limited list of books which is adapted to all classes cannot be made, still the reading of such books as one takes an interest in will cultivate the reading taste, and lead to a choice of books of a high and unexceptionable character. The direction to every person to read at once Xenophon's History, Cotton Mather's Essays, Plutarch's Lives, Butler's Analogy, Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Carlyle's French Revolution, Sharp's Culture and Religion, etc., is as unwise as to require every man to wear a ten-inch hat.

But this should be borne in mind, that people who cannot to-day read books of the class just referred to may do so with delight and even enthusiasm a year or more hence. The reading with pleasurable zest of one unvicious book, though of the light literature class, starts one on the way of mastering the world's best books; for the reading taste has begun its development the moment a decent book gives pleasure.

In view of all these considerations we venture the statement that any person in our itinerant club who has little or no taste or relish for reading may choose for the present that which passes for light (not vile) literature. Is this heterodoxy? We hope not.

Let us not be misunderstood. We make a most uncompromising war on bad books. A bad book is a bandit in society. Indeed, no name or epithet is severe enough for it. A public censor, wise and possessed of autocratical power, should be commissioned to enter the temples of literature and with a whip of small cords mercilessly drive from their stalls and lurking-places all these foul beasts and foul birds, until not one is left to prey upon their unsuspecting victims. John Milton's recommendation is, "to confine and imprison all bad books, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors."

Having ruled out of our list all books whose tendencies are low and bad we are in position to make an application of the foregoing thoughts. There are in our itinerant clubs young men who have had comparatively no educational advantages. They have been called from workshops or farms to the circuit, or to out-of-the-way appointments. There has been as yet no taste for reading of the higher sort; at least this is true comparatively speaking-there have been no opportunities for such cultivation. It is easier for such persons to talk than to read; gossip is the easiest kind of talk. Some of the difficult parts of our Conference Course of Reading is a horror to the class of which we are speaking. It must, then, be apparent that what these young men need is the cultivation of a love for reading; and the initial step may be light literature. It is true that such reading is only one of the lower rounds of an ascending ladder; but our point is this, that the young men we have in mind are more likely to climb well up the ladder if they step on that lower round than they are if they stand on street corners with their hands in their pockets, or join their interests with those of the great army of gossipers and tale-bearers. The hope we have, and it is a well-grounded one, is that if the young men we have in mind will read something, say the Arabian Nights (there are those who may be glad to know that so distinguished a man as Horne Tooke has said, "I read the Arabian Nights once every two years "), or if they read the Old Curiosity Shop, or some of the fictions of Cooper or of Gronig, and read with interest, the day is not distant when there will be delight in the reading of the Lady of the Lake or of the Vicar of Wakefield or of the descriptive poems of Whittier, Longfellow, and Bryant. Then Gronig's Life of Washington, Franklin's Autobiography, Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, and Livingstone's African Trav els will soon be found in their hands. And when this stage is reached we

may say that a taste for reading is fast developing, and soon the light literature will cease to interest. The rare editions of Shakespeare, Xenophon's writings, Butler's Analogy, are the ones on which the reader, after a time, will begin to feast.

THE ART OF CONSTRUCTING MATERIALS INTO A SERMONTHE LOGIC OF SERMON-BUILDING.

I. Preliminary Thoughts.

1. Objections to logical arrangement.

(1) It ties the mind down as to a task.

(2) It leads to dry and didactic development.

2. The advantages of logical arrangement may be inferred—

(1) In that all noted writers urge it.

(2) In that there is logical arrangement in all God's laws.

(3) In the aid afforded to the speaker.

ical arrangement affords power.

(4) In the aid afforded the hearer.

Consciousness of correct log

3. By transcendentalizing materials. Continued meditation gives transcendentalization.

4. By sanctification of materials. This depends on:

(1) Moral and religious character and endowments of the preacher.

(2) He must preach to them as if he knew them.

(3) The aim of the preacher-edification and soul-saving.

(4) The relation the preacher sustains to Christ and the Atonement.

THE YOUNG PREACHER AND THE FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE.

WHEN the preacher in the early years of his ministry reaches a point where the immense fields of knowledge are beginning to come under his view, and he realizes how little of it all he has mastered, and what in our day is expected of the preacher, he is in danger of despair, or, at least, of discouragement. How can he fulfill the obligations pressing upon him? How can he know any thing of all things or all things of any thing?

Take breath, young friend. Do not let the many tasks, or your own deficiencies, hurry you; for hurry is a great waste of time, besides being ill-mannered. Bear in mind, too, that the natural world, or the world of knowledge, cannot be circumnavigated in a day. Suppose one cannot become acquainted with all the facts of science, or with all the truths of philosophy, or with all the lore of literature, still one should not forget that "partial knowledge is better than total ignorance." By diligence one may add something to one's stock of available knowledge and sermonic materials during almost every wakeful hour. In a few years, by continuous and patient application, one need have no shame or fear before even the most intelligent congregation.