AVOID RHETORICAL DICTION.
(d) Avoid altogether such touches of expression as characterise verse, or rhetorical prose. I find in one sermon the sentence, "Think you St Paul trembled at the prospect?" Please re-write this, and say, "Do you think St Paul was afraid?" For you certainly would not say, speaking however gravely, to your friend, "Think you that we shall have a fine day to-morrow?" Rhetorical phrases rarely give an impression of practical reality.
(e) Do not speak in the pulpit as if you were writing notes for an edition of the Epistles. What does the labourer (and what do many hearers more highly educated than he) think when you say, on Rom. v. 1, that "weighty manuscript authority gives another reading"? And what does he think you mean when you talk about "Sheôl"? By the way, when you quote Scripture in the pulpit, passingly, to a general congregation, I would advise you to quote not the Revised Version, but the Authorized, which will surely be "the English Bible" for many long days yet. Unless you have before you some special difference between the two Versions, on which you can stop to speak explicitly, quote the familiar (and inimitable) diction of 1611.
PREACH WHAT CAN BE REPORTED.
(f) Prepare your sermon, and preach it, so that it shall be easy to report. One sermon here before me would be as hard as possible to retail at home. It is on Rom. v. 1, and it says some excellent things upon it. But it brings in holiness of heart where the text speaks only of acceptance of person, and it mingles the two topics so ingeniously together that the impression is seriously complicated. Think of the pious daughter yonder in church, going home to her infirm old mother, and trying to answer the question, "What did the gentleman preach about to-night?" Let us do our best to preach sermons which are not only sound, but portable.
(g) Take care to keep the sermon in tune with the text. Here is a manuscript on Psal. v. 12, a verse of exultant joy; but the last passage of the sermon, the passage which ought to concentrate the whole message, is full of solemn warning. Warn by all means; do not forget to sound the watchman's trumpet. But sound it in the right place. [Ezek. xxxiii.]
CUT THE PREFACE SHORT.
(h) Here is a sermon sadly spoiled by a long introduction. It tells us much about the circumstances of the inspired writer, but so as to throw little light on the message of the text. Here is another, on the wonderfully definite hope of blessedness after death given us in Phil. i. 21. This also is ruined by its introduction, which truly begins ab ovo, discussing the genesis of man's belief in immortality! That preface would leave, in the actual delivery of the sermon, about five minutes for the handling of the precious words, "To depart and to be with Christ, which is far better." Generally, be shy of much introduction and preface in the pulpit. I do not mean that we are never to elucidate connexions and contexts. But, remember limits. Your minutes are few, ah, so few, for such a Message,—Christ Jesus in His fulness, for man's need in its depth. Pass quickly through the porch into that Church.
BE ACCURATE IN STATEMENT.
(i) When you refer to Scripture facts, be accurate; a slip-shod habit there may fatally prejudice a not quite friendly hearer who knows something of the Bible; and it will certainly do no good to any hearer. Here is a sermon on Phil. i. 21, and it speaks of St Paul as writing to Philippi from his "dark cell." But St Luke says that he was "in his own hired house," [Acts xxviii. 30.] or at worst, "his own hired rooms." Here again I read of David as returning to "Jerusalem, the city of his fathers." But his fathers had lived and died at Bethlehem; and Jerusalem was in heathen hands till David himself took it!