AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. LATE BARTLET PROFESSOR OF SACRED RHETORIC IN ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1885 COPYRIGHT BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 1882. Franklin Press : STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY RAND, AVERY, AND CO. BOSTON. No A THOROUGHLY trained preacher is first a man, at home among men he is then a scholar, at home in libraries. other profession equals that of the pulpit in its power to absorb and appropriate to its own uses the world of real life in the present and the world of the past as it lives in books. A very essential part of a preacher's culture, therefore, concerns his use of these two resources of professional power. The large majority of the topics commonly treated by professors of homiletics as miscellanies will be found to arrange themselves naturally in these two lines of discussion. By so arranging them, I have sought to gain the concentration of unity and the cumulation of order. Like the Lectures on "The Theory of Preaching," in a former volume, these discussions retain the form and style of the lecture-room in which they were delivered, in response to the practical inquiries of students on the eve of entrance upon their life's work. Almost no other changes have been made than those which were necessary in the mechanical revision for the press. It should be observed, respecting that portion of this work which discusses the study of books, that its design is limited. I have by no means attempted to give an analysis of English |