FIRST SERMON AT BROOKLYN.

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I

reward, except as my will got hardened by it. don't know whether I should have kept on or not, if I had stayed there longer.

It so happened that the first sermon which I ever preached at Brooklyn-the only one, indeed, which I ever preached there before being called to the Church of the Pilgrims was preached without notes. I was called upon unexpectedly for the service, as I was passing through the city, and when I had with me no manuscript sermons. But I had a subject in mind on which I had written not long before, in which I had been at the time much interested, and of which I had made a thorough analysis. The course of thought pursued in the sermon was fresh in my mind, though the notes were not with me. I preached in a lecture-room, which was wholly filled with attentive hearers. I had no sort of fear of the congregation, which was entirely made up of strangers to me; and I found as I went on, in the treatment of the subject with which I had made

myself previously familiar, that the mind worked with a facility, a force, a sense of exhilaration, which I never had had in reading from a manuscript. I enjoyed the service, and had a certain sense of Christian success in it. The people were interested; and their interest had an instant reflex influence upon my own mind, so that the success became duplicated. It seemed to me, at the end, that it must be always easy and pleasant, under similar conditions, to repeat that experiment.

When, therefore, I was called to that church, and had decided to go there, I was fully determined to carry out this plan of preaching without notes, occasionally at least, at all hazards. I was twenty-five years old, and thought I knew something: as men are apt to think, at that time of life. I had had a year's practice in the pulpit, such as it was, and had gained some freedom and confidence from it. The congregation at Brooklyn was certainly larger than the one to which I had ministered before, and it seemed to

SERMON AFTER INSTALLATION.

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me likely to be more sympathetic with a freer tone and style of speech. I was more certain than ever that I should find relief and help in my preferred method of preaching, if I could master it; and I was resolved to master it, if the thing could be done.

So the first sermon which I preached, after my Installation, was preached without notes. It was very nearly a dead failure. It was an absolute failure, so far as any sense of liberty on my part, or any useful effect on the people, was concerned. I have the notes of it still; and not long ago, in looking over old papers, I happened upon these, and read them over. I saw at a glance what the secret of the failure had been. I had made too much preparation in detail; had written out heads, sub-divisions, even some passages or paragraphs in full, in order that I might be certain beforehand to have material enough at command; and the result of it was that I was all the time looking backward, not forward, in preaching; trying to remember, not only pre

arranged trains of thought but particular forms of expression, instead of trusting to the impulse of the subject, and seeking to impress certain great and principal features of it on the congregation.

My verbal memory has always been the weakest part of my mental organization. I hardly dare trust myself now to quote a sentence from any writer, without having it before me in manuscript. I had wholly overloaded this verbal memory, in my preparation for the service; and the inevitable consequence was that it and I staggered along together, for perhaps twenty-five minutes, and then stopped. I sank back on the chair, almost wishing that I had been with Pharaoh and his hosts when the Red Sea

went over them! The people were disappointed, and I was nearly sick. I am quite certain that if the proposal to invite me to Brooklyn had been made subsequently to that, instead of before it, I never should have been called to that congregation! I went back to the

LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.

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reading of manuscript sermons, and doubted for a good while if I should ever again try another method. I could not hazard another mortification so keen as that, or another failure so complete.

However, after a time, the old feeling revived, and it seemed a shame to give it up so. I always preached my weekly lectures without notes, or with only brief ones; and that helped and encouraged me to again try it in the church, as swimming in the pond helps one byand-by to swim out fearlessly in the open sea. I was in the habit, too, of making occasional 'addresses, as other clergymen did, on public anniversary occasions; and in giving these, as we always did, without notes, it was continually anew impressed upon me that it must be possible to do the same in the pulpit, and that there would come with it a certain increase of independence and of power.

I remember an occasion, for example-it must have been twenty-four or five years ago