conciseness could not well be excessive, as in maxims, proverbs, precepts: "Cease to do evil, learn to do well:" "Waste not, want not:" "Honour all men : love the brotherhood: fear God: honour the king." But in the general style of your sermon great conciseness is a considerable fault. For, if the mind of the hearer be not suffered to dwell long enough on an idea, but be hurried on to something else, before an impression is made, the matter of the discourse will be found to have had but little effect. In reading a book, if you do not catch the full sense of a passage, you may turn back and read it over again, or lay down the book and think; but when you are listening to a sermon, however interested you may be, you cannot ask the preacher to repeat or explain any thing which you have not fully understood, and, like Saint Augustin's hearers, signify to him when you have comprehended it'. Clearly, therefore, it is better for the preacher to say too much than too little-to dwell too long than too short a time on a subject. On the other hand you must avoid that tiresome prolixity of style, when "two grains of wheat are hid in two bushels of meal."

If, after having composed a sermon, you find any part of it prolix and heavy, the first way to remedy the defect is, to throw out superfluous matter, and compress it into a shorter space, or recast and break

1 Augustini Opera. De Doct. Christ. Lib. iv. cap. 10.

it up into shorter clauses. The following passage is very prolix, in consequence of putting too much matter into one sentence. “Of the world, implying its possessions and honours, its occupations and pleasures, as well as its cares and disappointments, it is by no means a subject of wonder, that they who are connected with it should entertain different ideas, that such differences should occasionally run into extremes, but that the prevailing opinion should be in its favour, and lead the majority of men to pursue its seeming advantages with unwise and unreasonable ardour." Perhaps it might be better arranged thus: "When we look at the world with its possessions and honours, its occupations and pleasures, its cares and disappointments, it is by no means a subject of wonder that they who are connected with it should entertain very different ideas respecting it. Nor can we be surprised that the prevailing opinion should be in its favour, and lead the majority of men to pursue its seeming advantages with unwise and unseasonable ardour."

There are two rules which I think you will find useful in correcting these faults in the style of a sermon. Both will appear at first sight more likely to increase than remedy prolixity, but on trial will be found the reverse. The first is to employ repetition'. It is necessary, as we observed, to dwell for a certain time on the same

idea, in order that it may fix itself on the mind of your hearers. But this must not be done by stuffing out your sentences with needless and unnecessary epithets, and cumbrous and unwieldy periphrases. What I recommend, then, is this: employ concise language, but repeat the same idea; repeat it in several forms, dwell on it, turn it over, bring it out again and again, even though with little variation of sense. Johnson, speaking of legal eloquence, says, "You must not argue in Committees as if you were arguing in the schools; close reasoning will not fix their attention; you must say the same thing over and over again in different words. If you say it but once, they miss it in a moment of inattention." He might have added, if they do not miss it, they forget it. But the repetition should not be apparent. If you have first enunciated a proposition in plain terms, repeat it in metaphors, or synonyms, or double negatives; in short in any way, so that you dwell on the idea just long enough to be sure it is taken in. An instance of this method

The following is found in

will best show what I mean. Paley's sermon on the text, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" "The case (he says) supposes a sense and thorough consciousness of the rule of duty, of the nature of sin, of the struggle, of the defeat. It is a prisoner sensible of his chains. It is a soul tied and bound by the fetters of its sin, and knowing itself to be so. It is by no means the case of the ignorant sinner.

It is not

the case of an erring mistaken conscience; it is not the case of a seared and hardened conscience." In the delivery of a sentence like this, you may address each clause to separate portions of your congregation, and the best use of it would be, if you could so interpret the expression of your hearers' countenance, as to repeat the idea in different forms, until they had taken it in, and no longer;-if you could just hammer at the nail till you had driven it home. Here is one advantage of extemporaneous preaching.

The second rule which I propose for avoiding prolixity without falling into too great conciseness is the following1:-If you find you have written a sentence which is somewhat heavy, and cannot readily be either broken up or omitted, you may correct it by adding to the end of it something pithy or concise; a brief summary, for instance, of what has gone before; a pointed illustration, a short and appropriate text, a smart antithesis, or striking sentiment. It may seem rather paradoxical to recommend you to make a sentence longer, in order to remedy prolixity; but this undoubtedly is the effect of such addition as I have described. It relieves the ear from the dulness of that which went before, and leaves off with a degree of vivacity which makes you forget the former heaviness. A sentence so constructed may be compared to a

heavy lance tipped with steel: it has weight at its point.

A similar effect is produced, by beginning the next paragraph with a smart sentence.

But I must find you some instances of these methods. The following from Paley' will exemplify both, "That righteousness exalteth a nation, is one of those moral maxims which no man chooses to contradict. Every hearer assents to it; but it is an assent without meaning. There is no value, or importance, or application perceived in the words. But when such things happen as have happened; when we have seen, and that at our doors, a mighty empire falling from the summit of what the world calls grandeur, to the very abyss and bottom, not of external weakness, but of internal misery and distress; and that for want of virtue, and of religion in the inhabitants, on one side probably as well as on the other, we begin to discover that there is not only truth, but momentous instruction in the text, when it teaches us that righteousness exalteth a nation. It is virtue, and virtue alone, which can make either nations happy, or governments secure."

"France wanted nothing but virtue, and by that want she fell."

In some cases, intentional verbosity, or more properly speaking, amplification, is a beauty. When, for instance, multitude, and amplitude, and vastness, and

1 Sermon xvi.