Introduction ||ae WESLEY had much to say on preachers and preaching, and said it well. Others may be greater masters of theory, but it would be difficult to equal him in practical wisdom, for it is given to few to have so wide and prolonged an experience.
He preached many times a week for more than fifty years, in nearly every part of England, Scotland, and Ireland, on varying topics, and to congregations made up of ''all sorts and conditions of men." A past master of the art himself, he was also a keen observer of others, and his pen gave ready and vivid expression to the vil Introduction wisdom with which experience and observation enriched him.
He was greatly interested, moreover, in the work of the men who served him as helpers, and offered them counsel as freely as the clouds give rain. His letters and journals sparkle with illuminating hints and reflections; and, not content ' with scattering fragmentary admonitions, he provided a special treatise on the cultivation of voice and gesture, and also published an address to the clergy on the qualifications expected of them.
Valuable and diversified as his observations are, they fail of their due effect through being scattered in miscellaneous fashion over the pages of some fourteen volumes. Collocation vill Introduction and proper spacing were needed to give forcible presentment to these widely separated fragments. Before they could command general attention and wield fitting influence they must be fashioned into a living organism.
This is the task attempted in the following pages. In studying the writings of Wesley for an entirely different purpose I was so impressed with the pertinency and vigour of his remarks on preaching in its varied aspects that it seemed to me eminently desirable to collect what was widely scattered into one volume; to gather with care the tumbled petals and, as far as might be, mould them into a living flower of which all might discern the comeliness and inhale the scent.
Introduction It will doubtless occur to many minds that, owing to changed conditions, the counsels pertinent to Wesley's time can hardly be relevant to our own. However swiftly these advices winged to the mark in other days, are they not likely, as anachronisms, to drag their pinions heavily in the atmosphere of to-day? Such was my own fear at first, but the apprehension was speedily dissipated: for no one can read much of Wesley without discovering that while he lived so vigorously in his own age, he also lived on in spirit into the next, and that a great deal of what he uttered in the past may with profit be repeated now. That this is so I am content to leave the extracts themselves to prove. x Introduction All that Wesley wrote on the subject is not given here. Discretion has been exercised, and an endeavour made by omitting what is merely local and temporary, or for other reasons unsuitable for repetition, to secure teaching that has in it not only the spirit of the past but the breath of the future.
Amid the numerous treatises prepared for and commended to the ministers and lay preachers of our day, here is one by the Founder of Methodism himself, adapted not only to the members of his own community but to the preachers of all churches.
He, being dead, yet speaketh, for though I have deemed it wise to include an essay on Wesley as a preacher, and to link the selections xi Introduction together with comments of my own, yet the body of the work is his, and his is the breath that bids it live.
The chapter for choirs and congregations has been added in the belief that its suggestions, and even its criticisms, accepted in a kindly spirit, may tend to encourage that ministry of song without whose sympathetic aid the pulpit can never achieve its best results.
ASHTEAD, October, 1903.