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Rh is to be a slovenly and casual informality! "Some people imagine," declared the late Bernard Manning of Cambridge, "that informality in the pulpit in itself induces a belief in their sincerity or genius. It induces only a belief in their bad taste, and makes us want to get under the seats. Do not behave with a triviality, a casualness, a haphazardness, as if not merely God were absent, but as if all decent people were absent too." There is one thing, and one thing only, which can rescue the preacher from the immense besetting dangers of his position, and that is to have his own spirit bathed in the atmosphere of worship, awed and subdued and thrilled that Christ should come so near. In the words of a great tribute once paid to John Brown of Haddington by no less a critic than David Hume, "That's the man for me, he means what he says: he speaks as if Jesus was at his elbow."

Be real in language. Shun everything stilted, grandiose, insipid or pedantic. Do not be like the learned preacher who in the course of a sermon in a village church remarked, "Perhaps some of you at this point are suspecting me of Eutychianism." In your business of bringing the Christian religion decisively to bear upon the needs and problems of a twentieth-century congregation, the language of Nicaea, or even of the Westminster Divines, may be a hindrance rather than a help. It is sheer slackness to fling at your people great slabs of religious phraseology derived from a bygone age, and leave them the task of re-38