Another instance that occurred in my early ministry did me a world of good.  I was invited to preach in the Presbyterian Church at Saratoga Springs about two years after I was licensed.  My topics were “Trusting Jesus Christ” in the morning and “The Day of Judgment” at the evening service.  The next day, when I was buying my ticket at the railway station to leave the town, a plain man (who was a baker in the village) said to me:  “Are you not the young man who spoke yesterday in our meeting-house?” I told him that I was.  “Well,” said he, “I never felt more sorry for any one in my life.”  “Why so?” I asked.  His answer was:  “I said to myself, there is a youth just out of the Seminary, and he does not know that a Saratoga audience is made up of highly educated people from all parts of the land; but I have noticed that if a minister, during his first ten minutes, can convince the people that he is only trying to save their souls he kills all the critics in the house.”  I have never ceased to thank God for the remark of that shrewd Saratoga baker, who, I was told, had come there from New Haven, Connecticut, and was a man of remarkable sagacity.  That was one of the profoundest bits of sound philosophy on the art of preaching that I have ever encountered, and I have quoted it in every Theological Seminary that I have ever addressed.  If we ministers pour the living truths of the Gospel red-hot into the ears and consciences of our audiences, they will have enough to do to look out for themselves and will have no time to level criticisms at us or our mode of preaching.  Cowards, also, are never more pitiable than when in the pulpit.

I will not enter here into the endless controversy about the comparative merits of written or extemporized sermons.  My own observation and experience has been that no rule is the best rule.  Every man must find out by practice which method he can use to the best advantage and then pursue it.  No man ever fails who understands his forte, and no man succeeds who does not.  Some men cannot extemporize effectively if they try ever so hard; there are others who, like Gladstone, can think best when they are on their legs and are inspired by an audience.  During the first few years of my ministry I wrote out nearly all of my sermons.  The advantage of doing that is that it enables a young beginner to form his own style at the outset by careful and systematic writing.  Spurgeon, often when a youth, read some of his sermons, although afterwards he never premeditated a single sentence for the pulpit.  Dr. Richard S. Storrs was a most fluent extemporaneous speaker, but for twenty years he carefully wrote all his discourses.  My own habit, after a time, was to write a portion of the sermon and turn away from my notes to interject thoughts that came in the heat of the moment and then turn to my manuscript.  This was generally the habit of Henry Ward Beecher.  After thirty years in the ministry I discarded writing sermons entirely and adopted the plan of preparing a few “heads” on a bit of note-paper, and tacking it into a Bagster’s Bible.  Dr. John Hall wrote carefully, leaving his manuscript at home; and so does Dr. Alexander McLaren, of Manchester, who is to-day by far the most superb sermonizer in Great Britain.  The eloquent Guthrie, of Scotland, committed his discourses to memory, and delivered them in a torrent of Godly emotion.