The Journals & Notebook of
 Nathan Bangs 1805-1806, 1817

 

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Bangs's advice "in regard to preaching"
Bangs Letters to Young Ministers of the Gospel 193-195

1. Select the leading idea in your text, and make that the subject matter of your sermon, and [do] not mingle up every doctrine of the gospel in each sermon.

2. Neither read nor memorize your sermons. Study all you can, write all you can, pray and meditate all you can, and you will not be at a loss for language to express your thoughts extemporaneously. Thus furnished, after maturing your subject, trust to your judgment, and not to memory. If a man of God, he will always help you by his Spirit.

3. Take it for granted, that your hearers know something as well as yourself, and therefore do not fatigue them with long sermons, dwelling on points of little or no importance, which they have heard a thousand times. Compress your thoughts into as few words as possible, and stop when you have done. Long sermons do no good by their length.

4. "Don't court a grin when you should woo a soul" [*]. Gravity is as essential as sincerity, to effect the objects of a gospel ministry. Affectation being the companion of ignorance, renders the latter doubly disgusting. Diffidence may prevent you from saying all you know, but affectation will make what you do say appear as the offspring of both pride and ignorance.

5. Study to be good, and not to be great. If you must be great, let it be the effect of goodness, and the unavoidable consequence of a conscientious discharge of all your duties.

6. Labour for God, and He will both help and reward you. You shall be fruitful in your own soul, and witness the beneficial results of your labours in others.

* William Cowper, The Task

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Edited by Scott McLaren
Book History Practicum
University of Toronto