1. Select the leading idea in your text,
and make that the subject matter of your sermon, and [do] not
mingle up every doctrine of the gospel in each sermon.
2. Neither read nor memorize your
sermons. Study all you can, write all you can, pray and
meditate all you can, and you will not be at a loss for
language to express your thoughts extemporaneously. Thus
furnished, after maturing your subject, trust to your
judgment, and not to memory. If a man of God, he will
always help you by his Spirit.
3. Take it for granted, that your hearers
know something as well as yourself, and therefore do not
fatigue them with long sermons, dwelling on points of little
or no importance, which they have heard a thousand times.
Compress your thoughts into as few words as possible, and
stop when you have done. Long sermons do no good by their
length.
4. "Don't court a grin when you should
woo a soul" [*]. Gravity is as
essential as sincerity, to effect the objects of a gospel
ministry. Affectation being the companion of ignorance,
renders the latter doubly disgusting. Diffidence may prevent
you from saying all you know, but affectation will make what
you do say appear as the offspring of both pride and
ignorance.
5. Study to be good, and not to be
great. If you must be great, let it be the
effect of goodness, and the unavoidable consequence
of a conscientious discharge of all your duties.
6. Labour for God, and He will
both help and reward you. You shall be fruitful in your own
soul, and witness the beneficial results of your labours in
others.
* William Cowper, The Task