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PUBLISHED FOR THE PROPRIETORS, BY

THOMAS GRIFFITHS, 13, WELLINGTON STREET.

MDCCCXXXI.

LOWNDES AND WHITE, PRINTERS, CRANE COURT, FLEET STREET.

PREFACE.

THE PREACHER has now reached a second volume; the usefulness of our labours is acknowledged, and our most sanguine expectations realized.

Considering Sermons, when delivered, as the property of the public, we commenced this Work by reporting them without the Ministers' consent. To this course, however, some objections were made, which induced us to solicit their concurrence. We felt confident that in such applications we should find widely diffused among the Clergy the noble and single-hearted purpose of extending Christian knowledge, which is so beautifully described in the words of one of the most gifted and pure-minded orators of the pulpit :

"Reading is the food of thought, and thought the cause of action; and, therefore, in what proportion the reading of a people is impregnated with religious truth, in that proportion will the conduct of a people be guided into religious ways. Ministers ought

to lay their hand upon the press as well as the pulpit, and season its effusions with an admixture of devout feeling and pious thought. Until the servants and Ministers of the living GoD do pass the limits of pulpit theology and pulpit exhortation, and take weapons in the hand, gathered out of every region in which the life of man or his faculties are interested, they shall never have religion triumph and domineer in a country, as beseemeth her high original, her native majesty, and her eternity of free-bestowed well-being." "To this the Ministers of Religion should suffer their attention to be called, for until they thus acquire the pass-word which is to convey them into every man's encampment, they speak to that man from a distance, and at disadvantage. It is but a parley; it is no conference, nor treaty, nor harmonious communication. To this end they must discover new

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vehicles for conveying the truth, as it is in Jesus, into the minds of the people."

It is with the greatest satisfaction we reflect on the good feeling and disinterested fervour in disseminating the truths of our pure religion -the precepts of our Divine Master-for the service of the Church of Christ, which, in inviting their co-operation, we have witnessed among Christian Ministers. We cannot refrain from expressing our grateful acknowledgment for the invaluable assistance we have experienced in furtherance of our design.

London, August 22, 1831.

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