BT 75 √25 1897 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped September, 1896. Reprinted December, Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. Berwick & Smith FOREWORD A FEW words may serve to make the aim of this book more plain to those who read it. A great part of what is written here was spoken to the students of divinity at Yale University in the spring of 1896, as one of the courses of "Lectures on Preaching" which have been given for some years on the Lyman Beecher Foundation. But I must frankly confess that a strong wish to say something which might reach beyond, or, better still, through, the immediate audience, and be of help to the wider circle of men and women who care for the vital problems of faith, drew me aside from the usual line of such lectures and gave this book a new purpose. The question of how to preach is highly interesting to students for the ministry. But it has already been answered so fully and so ably by those who have preceded me in this course that I cannot hope to add anything of value to their various counsels. And after all, it is a technical question. The art of |