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COLLOQUY THE TWELFTH.

FATHER AND SON.

SCENE: A Rectory Lawn. Evening of Trinity Sunday.

F. Among many things I should like to say to you, my dear boy, upon this, the evening of your ordination as deacon, by no means the least is, that I hope you will try with all your might to be a better preacher than your father.

S. I am sure, father, there is no need

F. I know what you would say, and I know what I could say. In looking back over a tolerably long ministry, I much regret I did not take greater pains, during the early part of it, to improve my preaching. However, no more of that. Do you remember the

verse, The preacher sought to find out acceptable words' ?

S. It is in Ecclesiastes, is it not?

F. Yes; we are not aware that King Solomon was in the habit of giving oral instruction; but his very sensible rule may profitably be imitated by those that are. Every preacher whose object is to do good should seek to find out 'acceptable words,' or, as it is in the Hebrew, 'words of delight.'

S. Now, father, I hope you are preparing to give me one of those little disquisitions of which I am so fond. Pray go on.

F. The first, by which I mean the earliest, though not the greatest object of the preacher, is naturally to gain the ears of his congregation. Failing in that, he fails in all. And I assure you, Tom, that this is no light task. Young clergymen generally assume that they are listened to by those before them. Never was assumption more unfounded. Many of them might just as well be fifty miles away,

S. I am afraid that if I may judge by my

own past experience in listening to sermons, university sermons among the number, young preachers are not the only men who fail to attract attention. Somehow one's thoughts, unless exceptionally interested at the outset, have a way of escaping from the preacher almost directly he has begun, and careering all round the world.

F. And therefore while the preacher is not responsible for habits of chronic inattention, probably more the fault of his audience than his own, he is bound to make his words as acceptable, as worthy of being listened to, as possible. Such words don't come without trouble. They have to be found out.'

S. All the men who were ordained with me seemed to think that the faculty of preaching will come to them as a matter of course. F. Then I pity their congregations. Tom,

my dear boy, don't entertain any such delusion. Here and there a man of exceptional genius may preach well from the beginning. Beyond all question, however, the vast majority have

to learn this thing. It is one of the dangers. of the Church of England that so many don't learn it.

S. Yet no one despises more than you do the means by which some men become popular preachers.

F. In what I am going to say I should wish to speak in the abstract, rather than to be supposed to refer to particular persons. Even the finding acceptable words may be too dearly purchased. It is but the means to an end, and with that end, which is neither more nor less than the building-up immortal souls, the means must not be inconsistent. The words must be acceptable in the sight of Heaven, as well as in that of an audience.

S. A very considerable restriction, I should think, upon the wild and spasmodic ideas of some modern sermons.

F. Yes. The preacher, you see, must not seek to make his words acceptable by propounding error. It was a complaint of God in the olden time, 'A wonderful and horrible

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thing is committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so ; and what will ye do in the end thereof ?' It would be a wonderful and horrible thing in this land of ours if priests and people should ever make a practical alliance for the toleration of false doctrine: if the people should say, 'Prophesy not unto us right things, prophesy unto us smooth things,' and if the priests should reply in effect, Very well; we see that is the way to make our preaching acceptable; ; we will do it.' To comfort the hearts of those whom God has not comforted, to preach peace, peace, where there is no peace, to send people away satisfied with themselves, when they ought rather to be anxious and apprehensive, this may be a path to popularity, but it is one which leads right away from usefulness. No, better to be dull than to be heretical, to be uninteresting than to be misleading. The very object of seeking acceptable words is that they may wage war upon sin :