I have no partiality for volumes of sermons; for I have derived from them comparatively little benefit. In this I suppose myself to be different from many others; for with many good people such volumes appear to be favorites. They should certainly prove helpful to religious persons who are frequently denied the privilege of hearing the living preacher; and they serve as a homiletical aid to such young preachers as can study them without imitating them. I think that I should not have been moved to the preparation of the present volume, but for the deep regret which I have often experienced, in common with many thoughtful men, that some preachers whom we have known, and on whose lips we have hung almost entranced, have left behind them, when they departed this life, nothing but the faint remembrance of sermons which we should have been glad to read again and again, and which were worthy of being transmitted to many generations. If any of mine approach these in merit, or even if they possess the merit which partial friends have often ascribed to them, I have thought that they might prove useful to some after my voice shall no longer be heard.

      Notwithstanding the considerations just mentioned, these sermons would probably have died with their author, but for the fact that I had occasion to deliver them where facilities for reporting them were at hand, and that the Guide Publishing Company thought so well of them before hearing them as to provide for their [v] publication. It has not been my custom to write sermons, either before or after delivery; and only two in this volume were written by my own hand. With the exception of the one on Inspiration, the one on The Jerusalem Church and the one of Mocking God, they all appear as they came from the pen of the stenographer, verbal mistakes alone being corrected. If, then, the value of a printed sermon depends in part, as I think it does, on its retention of the style and manner of the speaker, these will possess this merit. Their imperfections of style will be as truthful as any other part of the representation which they will make; and if, on this account, they shall smell less of midnight oil, the reader maybe compensated if they shall have some of the freshness of morning dew.

      I must express my thanks to the Broadway Church, Louisville, Ky., in whose temporary service all of these sermons were delivered during the summer of the year 1893, for the many courtesies which made that summer's work most agreeable; to Miss Mattie C. Huber, the stenographer, for the faithful and cheerful execution of her responsible task; and to the GUIDE Publishing Company, whose promptness and accuracy in every business transaction I can not too highly commend.

[SDLK v-vi]