iii. "Preach the Gospel _interestingly_." How shall we secure this? Some recipes for interest are familiar. There is the method of illustration; there is the method of anecdote: both excellent, and almost indispensable. Only, they are methods which have their risks, and must be used with care. Illustrations are apt to overwhelm the thing illustrated, the moment much detail is allowed; and they are apt to go on three feet, or even upon one, instead of upon four; and they may be drawn from quarters too remote to strike the hearers with effect. Anecdotes have the same risks; and, besides, they need, if they are to be used aright, to be carefully sifted and verified. I say this not to disparage what in some preachers' hands is a most powerful and also a most delicate weapon; yet the caution is certainly needed, especially by younger men.
But the surest secrets of interesting preaching lie deeper than anecdote and illustration. One of them, a very simple one to state, is clearness of thought, and of the expression and explanation of thought. I entreat my Brother to be an _explanatory_ preacher, by which I mean, not that he should treat his _brethren_ as if they were his _children_ (unless indeed it is a children's sermon), but that he should handle familiar religious terms with the resolve to make them _live and speak_ to the ordinary hearer. Nothing is more opiate-like than a sentence which is unreal to the hearer because it is mere phraseology. Nothing can be made more interesting than familiar phraseology (supposing it to be true and important) so treated as to speak its meaning out fresh and living in modern ears.