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MINISTRY AT STAND. [Chap. III. 



of his brother's. He continued the practice at Warrington. 

 At first he chiefly used his father's ; but their long sentences 

 did not suit his delivery, and he thought i 6 the religious fulness 

 of experience " in his writings was a little beyond most of his 

 hearers. Sometimes the sermons he adopted did not treat the 

 subject as he would have done, but " perhaps the better for 

 that." He soon commenced extempore preaching,* and it 

 had an effect on his style of writing ; but, as some of his con- 

 gregation did not like it, he rarely adopted it in the morning. 

 Services like his were not often to be heard. In later life they 

 had often more beauty and pathos, but he was always dis- 

 tinguished by his intense earnestness and depth of devotion. 

 His action was graceful and impressive, and the hope that was 

 in him gave him " great plainness of speech." God had given 

 him "a feeling heart to declare His love." "The common 

 people heard him gladly." What he said came home to their 

 " business and bosoms ; " now and then his friends were 

 scandalized by the homeliness of his illustrations and appeals. 

 He records of one of his sermons — " No man hath hired us " — 

 that it was thought " not proper for a sermon. Is it so ? " and 

 he told me that "Aunt S. thought it the most horrid sermon 

 she had ever heard ; but she does not know how the congrega- 

 tion are living in the midst of it, and know its truth. I feel 

 more and more the importance of striving to rouse the higher 

 classes to a sense of their responsibility as to the state of the 

 lower." The pulpit has become less conventional, and the 

 sermon would scarcely now excite this criticism. It is said of 

 an eminent preacher (Baxter ?) that he spoke as a dying man 

 to dying men. Philip often spoke as a sinner to sinners, little 

 as his hearers might sometimes suspect it. After delivering his 

 brother's sermon on the text, "All have sinned," he notes, 

 "But have all been pardoned? Have I been?" When at 

 Knutsford, " Some seem to have thought I was a reformed 



* His facility in extemporizing was once put to an odd test. He had 

 selected a sermon of his brother's, " He giveth His beloved sleep ; " but it 

 slipped under the foot-board, where he could not reach it, during the hymn 

 before the sermon. He did not reveal his loss, but preached on the text, 

 and delivered the written sermon on another occasion. 



