FUNK & WAGNALLS,
NEW YORK :

REVIEW SECTION. I.-“ HOW MAY THE MINISTRY INCREASE ITS EFFI.

CIENCY AND USEFULNESS?”

NO. VI.

BY LEONARD WOOLSEY Bacon, D.D., SAVANNAH, Ga. The series of articles which I am invited to conclude in the HOMILETIC REVIEW must have been looked for by many a minister of the gospel, when it was first announced, with anxious interest. The theme, “How may the Ministry Increase its Efficiency and Usefulness ?” came straight to “our business and bosoms"; and it had happily been assigned to five notably effective and useful men-two of them pastors, an elder and a younger, and three of them experienced in training pastors for their work. If now any should question my title to a place at the triclinium in such company, I could only plead the invitation of our host, and the fitness of allowing one who is very painfully conscious of his ineffectiveness, to sum up the instruction and help that he has gained from these diverse sources.

The main suggestions that have been enforced upon us are: The need of a deeper personal conviction of the main truths of the gospel; a thorough honesty, loyalty and courage in declaring them, throwing into the message the whole force of the preacher's personality; intellectual force sustained and increased by unremitted study, and thus commanding a hearing and an interested attention; Biblical study, as furnishing the preacher's model and material and promoting his mental growth; friendliness and personal sympathy with the hearers; the spirit of prayer, in conscious dependence on God; finally, and not least in importance, we are counselled to keep in mind that preaching, in the narrow sense of the word, is only one, and not always the chief, of the multifarious functions by which the “ effectiveness” of the ministry is attained. These seem to me the chief points of the several writers. Of course, thus detached from their setting and grouped in a syllabus, they lose their impressive force. But they are every one true, and every one important.