PREFACE. THE following SKETCHES have been prepared for publication under a continued pressure of parochial duties: the Author is therefore conscious that they are very imperfect, and that they fall far short even of the standard which he had proposed to himself. Persons who have never attempted this style of composition can have little idea how difficult it is, on the one hand, to compress a subject into such narrow limits, without impoverishing it, and, on the other, to make the Sketch tolerably interesting to the general reader, without so far extending it as to deprive it of its peculiar character. The Author has endeavoured to combine these objects in the following pages; with what success he will not venture to decide. His chief design has been to put into the hands of some of his younger brethren, in a cheap and compendious shape, specimens of a system of scriptural instruction, which he originally derived from his beloved friend, the late Rev. CHARLES SIMEON; a system to which he chiefly attributes, under the Divine blessing, a facility of composition which has enabled him to meet the heavy demands which have been made upon him during a ministry of twenty-two years. Should he be the means of affording any assistance to his less experienced brethren in the Gospel, his toils will be richly repaid; and should this humble volume prove acceptable, he would endeavour, from time to time, to bring out similar series of Sketches, each volume comprising a variety of occasional subjects. To those persons who ordinarily attend his ministry, the Author hopes that these recollections of Sermons which they have heard may not prove wholly uninteresting. The great scriptural truths which are here propounded need no defence nor commendation from man; and on points less explicitly revealed in the Word of God, the Author has not shrunk from declaring his honest convictions: nor has he scrupled to record in print the protests which he has often orally delivered against prevailing errors in high places. By the only sure and infallible test— God's Holy Word-he desires that his doctrinal statements may be tried; and, relying solely upon the blessing of Almighty God, and the influence of the Holy Spirit, he commits this volume to the press, trusting "that his labour may not be in vain in the Lord." CHELTENHAM, May, 1842. |