Editor's Table [pp. 470-480]

EDITOR'S TABLE.
475
to say that this is unavoidable. With a
duly awakened sense of the vast importance
of an animated and earnest delivery in
preaching, and by resisting the tendency to
dullness of both thought and manner, all this
might be obviated.
This evil is usually the most apparent
where read sermons are read rather than
spoken. Extempore preachers usually keep
up their fire better than readers of sermons,
though very dull extemporizers are not very
rare, and in any denomination the dull and
lifeless preachers will not be wanted, be they
young or old.
But beyond all else too many old ministers
have set a greatly exaggerated value upon
the excellence, and all sufficiency, of their old
sermons. That minister who concludes that
he has made sermons enough for a life-time,
and that he may stop work in the study,
and rely henceforth on his past labors and
accumulations, is sure to be undesired.
Probably the old sermons, good when they
wvere made, and wvhen they were fresh to
their author's mind, and had in them the
peculiar and invaluable element of adaptation, and were delivered with energy and
effect, are not good now, when used merely
for convenience. Delivered without spirit,
they can not be preached well, and will not
be heard waell. The same sermons that thundered twenty years before, and, under God,
aroused the people, and brought on revivals,
have too often become "stale, flat, and unprofitable," not by any change in themselves,
but in the preacher and his surroundings.
The trouble is, not so much in the sermons as
in the man himiself, who ceases from the labor
of new production, and declines spiritually
and mentally, and of course shows abated
power in every department of his ministerial
work. Eveiy thzing declines in the hands of
such a one; and the same person, to-(lay
preaching over again the same sermons with
which he was once mighty, and gained distinction, is only tolerated-the Churches
don't want him.
The old men in the ministry who have retained their popularity and added to it, and
there are such, are men who have never
turned away at all from the forge and the
anvil, and the hammer of the workshop.
They may sometimes use an old sermon, just
as they always did,-aand such sermons are
often the most effective of any,-but they
always prepare them anew. The living minister, -who shall command the minds and
hearts of his congregations, must be a working
ministel, bringing out of his treasury things
new and old. He must keep himself abreast
of the thoughts of the times, and especially
must he be in lively sympathy with the religious spirit of the day. Such a one does
not spend less time in study than he formerly
did; and what has been gained in facility
of working, is turned to account for improving the quality of his work.
The old ministers that are not wanted have
not usually been of this sort of men. We
know all that may be said for them, and we
heartily sympathize with their disappointments and dissatisfactions, but we fear that
the help they seek is impossible to them. But
let our still popular preachers be warned
against the danger of ever ceasing to study to
show themselves approved. The Churches
care but little whether their ministers are old
or young; but they want live ministers; men
who, in their persons, and in all their personal
habits, and especially in their preaching,
both as to manner and matter, most honor
the sacred calling. X. X.
DEATH OF BISHOP JANES.
IN common with the thousands of American Methodism, the editor of the REPOSITORY
mourns the loss of a chief and a long tried
leader of the host of our Israel, Bishop E. S.
Janes, who died at his residence in New
York, September I8, i876, in the seventieth year of his age, and the thirty-thlird of
his episcopate; and beyond the common
grief that has fallen upon so many, the editor
mourns the taking off of one with whom
he has for long years, and somewhat closely,
associated in Church-work, and also in not
a few personal domestic and social relations.
His history, for nearly half a century, is also
that of his Church,-the annals of which must
be his own memoirs,-and in its records his
name must always hold a conspicuous place.
His term of official service as a bishop of the
Methodist Episcopal Church was longer than
that reached by any of his predecessors,
and in the amount of work rendered he
stands unrivaled among them, except by the
first upon the list,-Asbury,-whom he resembled in many points of his character and
1876.]