once whether they are stated by one who has felt them himself, is personally acquainted with their power, is subject to their influence, and speaks from actual experience; or whether they come from one who knows them only in speculation, has gathered them from books, and thought them out by his own reason, but without any sense of their spiritual operation. But who does not know how much easier it is to declare what has come to our knowledge from our own experience, than what we have gathered coldly at second hand from that of others;--how much easier it is to describe feelings we have ourselves had, and pleasures we have ourselves enjoyed, than to fashion a description of what others have told us;--how much more freely and convincingly we can speak of happiness we have known, than of that to which we are strangers. We see, then, how much is lost to the speaker by coldness or ignorance in the exercises of personal religion. How can he effectually represent the joys of a religious mind, who has never known what it is to feel them? How can he effectually aid the contrite, the desponding, the distrustful, the tempted, who has never himself passed through the same fears and sorrows? or how can he paint, in the warm colors of truth, religious exercises and spiritual desires, who is personally a stranger to them? Alas, he cannot at all come in contact with those souls, which stand most in need of his sympathy and aid. But if he have cherished in himself, fondly and habitually, the affections he would excite in others, if he have combated temptation, and practised self-denial, and been instant in prayer, and tasted the joy and peace of a tried faith and hope;--then he may communicate directly with the hearts of his fellow men, and win them over to that which he so feelingly describes. If his spirit be always warm and stirring with these pure and kind emotions, and anxious to impart the means of his own felicity to others--how easily and freely will he pour himself forth! and how little will he think of the embarrassments of the presence of mortal man, while he is conscious only of laboring for the glory of the ever present God. This then is the one thing essential to be attained and cherished by the Christian preacher. With this he must begin, and with this he must go on to the end. Then he never can greatly fail; for he will FEEL HIS SUBJECT THOROUGHLY, AND SPEAK WITHOUT FEAR. End of Project Gutenberg's Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching, by Henry Ware