(_d_) Avoid altogether such touches of expression as characterise verse, or rhetorical prose. I find in one sermon the sentence, "_Think you_ St Paul trembled at the prospect?" Please re-write this, and say, "_Do you think_ St Paul was afraid?" For you certainly would not say, speaking however gravely, to your friend, "Think you that we shall have a fine day to-morrow?" Rhetorical phrases rarely give an impression of practical reality.
(_e_) Do not speak in the pulpit as if you were writing notes for an edition of the Epistles. What does the labourer (and what do many hearers more highly educated than he) think when you say, on Rom. v. 1, that "_weighty manuscript authority gives another reading_"? And what does he think you mean when you talk about "_SheÙl_"? By the way, when you quote Scripture in the pulpit, passingly, to a general congregation, I would advise you to quote not the Revised Version, but the Authorized, which will surely be "_the_ English Bible" for many long days yet. Unless you have before you some special difference between the two Versions, on which you can _stop to speak explicitly_, quote the familiar (and inimitable) diction of 1611.
(_f_) Prepare your sermon, and preach it, so that it shall be _easy to report_. One sermon here before me would be as hard as possible to retail at home. It is on Rom. v. 1, and it says some excellent things upon it. But it brings in holiness of heart where the text speaks only of acceptance of person, and it mingles the two topics so ingeniously together that the impression is seriously complicated. Think of the pious daughter yonder in church, going home to her infirm old mother, and trying to answer the question, "What did the gentleman preach about to-night?" Let us do our best to preach sermons which are not only sound, but portable.
(_g_) Take care to keep the sermon in _tune with the text_. Here is a manuscript on Psal. v. 12, a verse of exultant joy; but the last passage of the sermon, the passage which ought to concentrate the whole message, is full of solemn _warning_. Warn by all means; do not forget to sound the watchman's trumpet. [Ezek. xxxiii.] But sound it in the right place.