"THE LETTER KILLETH, BUT THE SPIRIT GIVETH LIFE.”—Laub, LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT. PREFACE. THE MISSION OF THE HOMILIST is not to supply Sermons for indolent or incompetent preachers, but stimulus and tonic for the true-hearted, hardworking, and genuine teacher. It does not deal in the "ready-made," but in the raw material. It only admits contributions of the most condensed and suggestive character. It requires things, not words-healthy saplings, just rising into sight and struggling into shape, not lifeless timber, however exquisitely carved or brilliantly polished. The former may grow, the latter must rot. It prefers one life-germ to a cart-load of manufactured sermons. It does not treat sacred texts as pegs on which to hang artistic discourses, but as bread-corn for hungry souls. Although THE HOMILIST has passed through five Serial forms, numbering in all thirty-seven volumes, of which about ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND have been sold, another Series has been called for, and that by clergymen of all denominations, not only in this country and the colonies, but throughout Europe and America. The larger portion of the volumes that have appeared are out of print, and but few remain unsold; still the circulation continues as great as ever. This Volume, the THIRTY-NINTH of THE HOMILIST, is the SECOND of the new and Enlarged Series. It has, as will be seen, an additional Editor, many new Contributors, and some new branches of thought and intelligence for pulpit service. As the old key-note will still rule the melodies of THE HOMILIST, and no new specific description is requisite, the former Preface may be again transcribed. "First: The book has no finish. The Editor has not only not the time to give an artistic finish to his productions, but not even the design. Their incompleteness is intentional. He has drawn some marble slabs together, and hewn them roughly, but has left other hands to delineate minute features, and so polish them into beauty. He has dug up from the Biblical mine some precious ore, smelted a little, but left all the smithing to others. He has presented 'germs,' which, if sown in good soil, under a free air and an open sky, will produce fruit that may draw many famishing spirits into the vineyard of the Church. |