should not be condensed into a single course of twelve, to be repeated in substance each year, but that they should be so enlarged and divided as to give to each year its separate and distinct topics. I have therefore considered in this, the first year, chiefly the personal elements which bear an important relation to preaching.

The second year will deal with the auxiliary forces and external implements by which the preacher prepares the way for the sermon, or gathers up its fruit: the conduct of public service, of prayer-meetings, and of social gatherings of every kind; the function of music in public worship; the methods of dealing with new fields of labor; the direction of church-work in old communities, in short, a consideration of social and religious machinery as connected with preaching.

I purpose to discuss during the third year the method of using Christian doctrines, in their relations to individual dispositions and to the wants of communities.

It will therefore be seen that this volume contains only one division of the whole course of lectures.

The discourses here given were wholly unwritten, and were familiar conversational addresses, rather than elaborate speeches. The phonographic report of the lecture on "Sermon-Making," when prepared for the press, unaccountably disappeared, and was never regained. I was obliged to dictate a new lecture in

the best way I could. Those who heard the course may by this circumstance explain the difference between what they read and what they remember to have heard.